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A Swiss former banker who has unveiled the looting of the 1MDB State Investment Fund of Malaysia is looking for $ 18 million in victim fee of a corrupt former Goldman Sachs director who will be convicted of the affair on Thursday.
Xavier Justo, who brought out a prison sentence in Thailand about what he claims that an invented blackmail case was with regard to 1MDB, argues that the money would acknowledge the price he paid for a decade to tell the truth about the fund.
The claim of Justo, made in an application to a New York judge in the case of Tim Leissner, former head of Goldman’s Southeast Asia operations, will test the application of US laws on a refund on victims of federal crimes.
If it is even partially granted by Judge Margo Brodie from the court, who is planned to condemn Leissner on Thursday, it could create a new path for people affected by white collar crime to claim compensation.
It is unclear when Brodie will rule the claim, which emphasizes the still incomplete settlement about the international Multibillion dollar 1MDB scandal.
It is partly based on the idea disputes by Leissner and the US government that the crimes of the former Goldman banker must be considered part of the broader conspiracy of 1MDB and therefore he can be held responsible for damage to Justo.
Justo’s claim was “fascinating” and would change “criminal persecutions of white key” if he protected a significant part of his request, said John Coffee, professor of the Columbia Law School.
“In cases where the suspect is solvent, victims will stand in line that have been identified by the plaintiff’s lawyers,” said Coffee, although he added that Brodie might be careful with such a statement. Justo’s recording of a claim for interest on money he had prevented from using was “a bit a bit,” he said.
The case against Leissner, a former Goldman Hoogvlieger, aimed at the alleged embezzlement of more than $ 2.7 billion of bond deals arranged by the bank for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013.
Leissner agreed to collaborate with American authorities in 2018 and argued guilty of money laundering and foreign bribery costs.
Justo worked for Petrosaudi International, an oil company that was in a joint venture with 1mdb. When he left the company in 2011, he took a series of e -mails. That communication eventually led to a story of February 2015 on the Sarawak report blog with a conspiracy to steal at least $ 700 million from 1mdb.
Justo was arrested a few months later on the island of Koh Samui by the Thai police, where he built a resort complex. He argued guilty of blackmail and attempted extortion with regard to attempts he had made to secure the escape money that he said he would owe from Petrosaudi and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Justo has said since he is known because Thai officials and Petrosaudi representatives threatened him with a long punishment if he didn’t. Both Petrosaudi and Thai authorities have denied some incorrect behavior.
A Swiss court condemned the most important executives of Petrosaudi Tarek Obaid and Patrick Mahony last year of darkening more than $ 1.8 billion of 1MDB in some prosecutors burned the “scam of the century”. The couple is attractive.
“Mr Justo … stood in the way of Mr Leissner and the plans of Mr Leissner after he had shared critical documents with a journalist who exposed the criminal nature of the 1MDB schedule,” reads the submission of Justo’s lawyers.
“Mr. Justo manifested the precise risk that Mr Leissner and his fellow samplers had been identified and successfully managed for years: that someone would bring the fact that 1MDB was nothing more than a vehicle for the theft and abuse of billions of dollars,” it says.
Justo, who was released from prison in Bangkok in 2016, claims that he must be entitled to compensation under the Restitution Act of the American compulsory victims and the rights Act of Crime Victims’ Rights. His claim comprises $ 9.5 million for lost real estate and company, including in the Thai resort, which he says he was forced to sell with a discount and $ 8.6 million in interest.
Leissner objected to the $ 18 million compensation claim in a court application, and claimed that his criminal behavior was not the cause of any damage that Justo could have suffered. Leissner said that he was never accused of being part of the alleged retaliation scheme for locking Justo in Thailand and Justo was not eligible as a victim according to American legislation.
The US Department of Justice opposed the claim on similar grounds. Justo’s “losses do not arise from the specific behavior that forms the basis of Leissner’s violations of conviction,” said it in an application.
The 1MDB case went to the top of Malaysian politics and led to the prison in 2022 of the former Prime Minister Najib Razak. Researchers in the US claim that at least $ 4.5 billion from the fund was stolen through different plots that are devised by the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who in general remains but maintains his innocence.