Back in March Kimora Lee Simmons' ex-husband Tim Leissner, was ordered to forfeit shares in the Celsius energy drink used as collateral for his bond, after he was convicted on fraud charges [click here if you missed that].
Now Kimora is fighting for the return of the shares claiming she was the sole owner....
From Financial Post
Kimora Lee, the former model and ex-wife of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Tim Leissner, claims that shares worth about $93 million that he was ordered to forfeit as part of his 1MDB guilty plea actually belong to her.
Lee asked a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday to hold a hearing where she intends to establish she rightfully owns 892,732 shares in Celsius Holdings Inc., a fitness drink maker. She claims she purchased the shares with money she earned from her modeling career and her Baby Phat clothing line.
The shares were wrongly included in a March federal order requiring Leissner to surrender more than 3.3 million Celsius shares as proceeds of his crimes, Lee claims.
Leissner, Goldman Sach’s former Southeast Asia head, pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiring with financier Jho Low, the alleged mastermind of the sprawling fraud scheme, to bribe officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi to facilitate bond deals. Low, who remains a fugitive, pocketed $1.42 billion from the fraud, the US has said.
“Lee has established that she is a bona fide purchaser for value of the Celsius shares,” she said in the filing. “Leissner did not contribute any funds to the purchase of the Celsius shares and did not own the Celsius shares. The fact that the Celsius shares were used as collateral for Leissner’s bond does not mean that there is a connection between Leissner’s offenses and those shares which were seized.”
Shares in the company traded at $104.26 Friday in New York, making the 3.3 million shares worth more than $344 million.
Leissner, who was the government’s star witness at a trial of his former subordinate, Roger Ng, was also ordered in March to surrender $43.7 million in cash in addition to the shares.
Fun Fact: Russell Simmons sued Kimora over the shares, after they were used for Tim's bond, claiming they belonged to him [click here if you missed that].
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