Two years ago Russell Simmons sued his ex-wife Kimora Lee Simmons accusing her of using their jointly owned energy drink stock to bail her husband Tim Liessner out of jail after he was indicted in the 1MBD Malaysian bond fraud scandal [click here if you missed that].
Now Kimora and Tim have been ordered to forfeit the stock in restitution...
From Bloomberg
Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Tim Leissner, who pleaded guilty to participating in the massive 1MDB foreign bribery fraud, was ordered to forfeit $43.7 million in cash as well as all 3.3 million shares in fitness drink company Celsius Holdings Inc.
US District Judge Margo Brodie on Friday ordered Leissner to surrender the assets as part of his earlier guilty plea to foreign bribery and money-laundering charges related to the 1MDB scandal. Leissner has been free on $20 million bail since his arrest in June 2018. He pleaded guilty in August 2018 and was the government’s star witness against his former Goldman colleague Roger Ng.
Ownership of the Celsius shares remains in dispute. Ng sued Leissner in New York state court in November, alleging his ex-boss cheated him out of an investment worth at least $130 million. Ng alleged that Leissner took his original $1.25 million investment in Celsius, has since grown in value enormously. That case is still pending.
Brodie said in her Friday order that the Celsius shares were being held at a JPMorgan Chase & Co. account in the name of Leissner’s former wife, Kimora Lee Simmons. The judge said anyone who asserts a legal interest in the Celsius shares may file a petition with the court.
Low stole $1.42 billion from three bond transactions that Goldman arranged for 1MDB, according to a forensic accountant with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who testified at Ng’s trial. The US said evidence showed Ng collected $35.1 million in the fraud while Leissner received $73.4 million. Low remains a fugitive.
Leissner testified at the trial that, as part of his guilty plea, he had agreed to surrender a stake in Celsius he estimated was now worth about $200 million and had previously posted 3.25 million shares in Celsius as collateral to secure his bond.
During his time on the witness stand he admitted to faking divorce documents, creating phony email accounts, marrying multiple women at the same time and keeping money that wasn’t his.
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