Goldman 1MDB Deal Was Missing #AbuDhabi Energy Chief Who Took Bribes, Leissner Says - Bloomberg

Goldman 1MDB Deal Was Missing Abu Dhabi Energy Chief Who Took Bribes, Leissner Says - Bloomberg

Just as Goldman Sachs Group Inc. bankers were set to close their first 1MDB bond deal in May 2012, there was a hitch: They were missing a crucial signature.

Khadem al-Qubaisi, who was head of Abu Dhabi’s state-owned energy company -- and had been paid off to guarantee the $1.75 billion transaction, according to the star witness in an ongoing 1MDB bribery trial -- couldn’t be found. Without his sign-off, the deal would collapse.

“They were in a state of panic to get that guarantee completed,” Goldman’s former Southeast Asia chairman Tim Leissner told a jury Thursday at the trial of his onetime colleague Roger Ng.

Leissner is the U.S. government’s key witness against Ng, who is accused of conspiring with Leissner and Malaysian financier Jho Low to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the deals for Malaysia’s wealth fund, 1Malaysia Development Bhd., through kickbacks and bribes to Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials. The deals totaled $6.5 billion.