Tim Leissner was born in Germany as son of a Volkswagen executive, he studied at the University of Siegen.
[2] He retired in January 2016 after an internal review found he sent a fake letter to Banque Havilland on behalf of Jho Low.
In 2018 he pled guilty to charges he personally stole $200 million from a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) and that he broke the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying bribes to corrupt Malaysian and Emirati offices to get Goldman Sachs business.
[3][4] Leissner was banned for life by the Securities and Exchange Commission and forced to pay a $43 million fine.
[16] Leissner is portrayed in the book Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World by Tom Wright and Bradley Hope of The Wall Street Journal, which focuses on Jho Low, the purported mastermind behind the 1MDB scheme.