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Former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng has been convicted by a US jury of corruption charges related to his role in helping embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB development fund.
The charges stemmed from one of the biggest financial scandals in history.
Prosecutors charged Ng, Goldman’s former top investment banker for Malaysia, for conspiring to violate an anti-corruption law and launder money.
They said he helped his former boss, Tim Leissner, embezzle money from the fund, launder the proceeds and bribe officials to win business for Goldman.
Ng, 49, had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
His lawyers say Leissner, who pleaded guilty to similar charges in 2018 and agreed to cooperate with the prosecutors’ investigation, falsely implicated Ng in the hopes of receiving a lenient sentence.1MDB fallout for Goldman Sachs CEOThe chief executive’s pay is cut by 36 per cent over the bank’s role in a scandal that saw Goldman Sachs agree to pay $3.74 billion in settlements.Read more
The fund was founded to pursue development projects in the South-East Asian country.
Ng was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) through bribery and circumvention of Goldman’s internal accounting controls, as well as one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
“Today’s verdict is a victory for not only the rule of law, but also for the people of Malaysia,” Breon Peace, the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement.
“The defendant and his cronies saw 1MDB not as an entity to do good for the people of Malaysia, but as a piggy bank to enrich themselves.”
Ng, wearing a black suit jacket and black tie, showed little emotion as the jury’s foreperson read out the verdict.
He glanced back and forth between the jury and the desk he was seated at.
His lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, hung his head after the guilty verdict to the first count was read.
US District Judge Margo Brodie ordered that Ng be subject to a curfew pending sentencing, but said she did not consider him a flight risk.
Deliberations began on Tuesday after a nearly two-month trial in the Federal Court in Brooklyn.
‘Hard to win’
Mr Agnifilo said Ng might appeal, depending on the outcome of his post-trial motions and his sentence.
He stood by his decision to convince Ng to waive extradition to face trial, saying he had a better chance of a fair trial in the US than in Malaysia.
“These big cases are tough and they’re hard to win,” Mr Agnifilo told reporters.KPMG pays Malaysian government $111 million settlement over 1MDB scandal Malaysia says it has recovered enough funds linked to scandal-tainted state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) to pay off only the principal amount of the debt still owed by the firm this year.Read more
Prosecutors have said Goldman helped 1MDB raise $US6.5 billion ($8.7 billion) through three bond sales, but that $US4.5 billion was diverted to government officials, bankers and their associates through bribes and kickbacks between 2009 and 2015.
Ng is the first, and likely only, person to face trial in the US over the scheme. Goldman in 2020 paid a nearly $US3 billion fine and its Malaysian unit agreed to plead guilty.
Jurors heard nine days of testimony from Leissner, who said he sent Ng $US35 million in kickbacks. Leissner said the men agreed to tell banks a “cover story” that the money was from a legitimate business venture between their wives.
Ng’s wife, Hwee Bin Lim, later testified for the defence that the business venture was, in fact, legitimate.
She said she had invested $US6 million in the mid-2000s in a Chinese company owned by the family of Leissner’s then-wife, Judy Chan, and that the $US35 million was her return on that investment.
Mr Agnifilo said in his closing argument that Leissner could not be trusted.
Alixandra Smith, a prosecutor, said in her summation that Leissner’s testimony was backed up by other evidence.
Jho Low, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the scheme, was indicted alongside Ng in 2018 but remains at large.
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