Nooryana Najwa Najib, the daughter of former Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak has admitted to meeting former Goldman Sachs executives, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng.
In a Facebook post today, she also admitted to wanting a job at the firm, only to be rejected.
“Yes, I did inquire if Goldman Sachs had such interdisciplinary roles. I was prepared to interview for them. And yes, I was told that Goldman Sachs does business with the government of Malaysia so it could be a conflict of interest.”
“Meeting Tim Leissner and Roger Ng was nothing more than an opportunity to learn more about Goldman Sachs’ demanding analyst programme.”
After being rejected, she said she was then introduced to another job at TPG, an investment firm.
“I interviewed for an intern analyst position at the TPG London office.”
Tim, Goldman’s former Southeast Asia chairman, is now testifying against Roger whom prosecutors say received millions of dollars in kickbacks for helping embezzle funds from 1MDB.
Roger has pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to launder money and to violate an anti-bribery law.
Tim said in his testimony on 22 February that Goldman was to get Najib’s children jobs at the bank in return for lucrative business deals.
He told the jury that Roger had emailed him saying they would “work on getting them to join GS”, although in the end he had only helped Najib’s daughter get a job at TPG.
After landing the job as an intern at TPG, she said she had worked for some 11 months before being promoted to a full-time analyst following an internal performance review.
She said she was then transferred to the TPG Hong Kong office where she spent two and a half years working on the TPG Asia fundraising efforts.
“I subsequently left TPG in June 2015 to focus on my business and graduate school applications.”
Najib himself in a Facebook post yesterday sidestepped the issue by claiming that none of his children had ever been offered a job or worked at Goldman.
He avoided touching on the interest shown by her daughter and avoided answering the meeting between his daughter and Tim.
