Kimora Lee Simmons’ estranged husband Tim Leissner has filed for divorce after 12 years of their marriage.
According to an E! News report, Leissner filed paperwork to initiate divorce proceedings shortly before he was set to begin his two year federal prison sentence in February. He cited “irreconcilable differences” as the reason for their breakup and requested joint custody of his and Simmons’ 11 year old son Wolfe.
He also asked for spousal support from Simmons while also seeking to block her from receiving alimony. The divorce paperwork was reportedly completed on February 4. His attorney, Henry Mazurek informed that it happened days before he turned himself in at a Pennsylvania federal facility on February 6.
Leissner is in prison for his role in the massive 1MDB corruption and money laundering scandal, one of the largest financial frauds in history. He is a former senior Goldman Sachs banker in Southeast Asia. Reports indicated that he has been living a separate life from Simmons since 2022.
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All we need to know about Kimora Lee Simmons estranged husband Tim Leissner
Tim Leissner has drawn renewed interest in his life after the news of his divorce from his estranged wife, Kimora Lee Simmons came into the spotlight.
He was born in 1969 in Germany and is mainly recognised as a former investment banker and convicted felon for his central role in the 1MDB state fund scandal. After receiving an education in Germany he entered global investment banking, focusing on mergers and capital markets.
Tim Leissner began his career in investment banking at Lehman Brothers in 1997, working as the head of the mergers and acquisitions group. He was the representative of the Asia Pacific region for six years.
After Lehman Brothers, Leissner moved to JPMorgan and then joined Goldman Sachs in 1998. He rose quickly to fame while working at Sachs as an investment banker. He was promoted to the position of Managing Director in 2002 and then became a partner in 2006.
In 2013, Tim Leissner was appointed to the Partnership Committee, as it placed him in the firm’s senior leadership role. In 2014, he became Chairman of Goldman Sachs’ Southeast Asia division. In this role, he oversaw deals across the region until his retirement in 2016.
He quit Sachs after an internal review of his emails found that he had sent an unauthorized reference letter on behalf of a Malaysian financier, Jho Low to another bank allegedly violated the company’s rules.
Leissner first faced criminal charges in 2018 when he was formally charged by US authorities in connection with the 1MDB scandal. Shortly afterward Leissner pleaded guilty to conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and to participating in a money‑laundering conspiracy linked to 1MDB.
In May 2025, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a Brooklyn federal court, nearly seven years after he pleaded guilty. He began serving the sentence in February 2026.
Tim Leissner met Kimora Lee Simmons on a business class flight from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur in 2012. Their relationship developed quickly before they secretly married in 2014. Their marriage was built on deception as he admitted in March 2022 that he faked his divorce papers as he was still legally married to his first wife Judy Chan.
Edited by Aastha Dass