KUALA LUMPUR – Prosecutors in the United States trial of former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng have revealed that up to US$35.1 million (RM148 million) in funds were siphoned out of 1Malaysia Development Bhd’s (1MDB) first bond deal in 2012 and transferred to an offshore account held in his mother-in-law’s name.
Prosecution witness Sean Fern of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) told a New York court that the funds were transferred in three tranches between 2012 and 2013 to an offshore account controlled by Tan Kim Chin, Ng’s mother-in-law, according to a Bloomberg report.
Some of the stolen funds were traced to purchases of over US$300,000 in diamond jewellery, including a six-carat ring and a US$20,000 gold-plated hourglass, Fern said.
Ng, 47, was charged in the federal court in New York in 2018 for bribery and laundering money siphoned from 1MDB during his time as Goldman Sachs’ head of investment banking in Malaysia and faces up to 20 years jail if convicted. He has pleaded not guilty.
Neither Tan nor her daughter, Lim Hwee Bin, have been indicted in Ng’s case. However, prosecutors had previously accused Lim of assisting her husband in laundering 1MDB funds and labelled her an uncharged “co-conspirator”.
Fern told the court that the transfers to Tan’s accounts were done at the instruction of Hong Kong businesswoman Judy Chan, the ex-wife of disgraced investment banker Tim Leissner.
Leissner, who was Goldman Sachs’ Southeast Asia head and Ng’s superior at the time the 1MDB scandal played out, was charged separately in the US for similar offences. Leissner pleaded guilty in 2018 and agreed to become the prosecution’s star witness in his former subordinate’s trial.
Ng faces a separate trial related to 1MDB in Malaysia, where he has been charged with conspiring to launder money and bribe government officials.
US and Malaysian officials are also on the hunt for fugitive Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho, who they accuse of being the mastermind in the multi-billion-dollar 1MDB scandal and the key individual who conspired with Leissner and Ng to steal from the sovereign wealth fund.
During his testimony, FBI agent Fern said Low, better known as Jho Low, had allegedly used hundreds of millions of dollars from the 1MDB bond deals to bribe officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi.
Some US$4.5 billion in funds had been stolen from 1MDB, according to US and Malaysian authorities, but Malaysia has said that at least US$4.3 billion more remain unaccounted for.
Goldman Sachs, which arranged the 1MDB bond deals, had in 2020 paid nearly US$3 billion in fines and its Malaysian unit pleaded guilty in US court. – The Vibes, March 23, 2022
