KUALA LUMPUR – The wife of banker Roger Ng, who is on trial over alleged siphoning of funds related to 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), has testified that a feng shui master had warned Ng’s former boss Tim Leissner about “bad karma”.
“Don’t cause bad karma,” Lim Hwee Bin was quoted by Bloomberg as recalling the words from a “Master Pang”.
“Whatever bad is coming is coming out of your mouth,” she added in narrating to a court in New York what the soothsayer had supposedly said.
Ng, 49, is facing accusations of pocketing millions of dollars in kickbacks in the 1MDB deal, with allegations of money laundering and violating anti-bribery laws.
Testifying for her husband, Lim said that she and Ng arranged for the feng shui readings for Leissner in 2015 and 2016.
Leissner, who is a former partner at investment and financial firm Goldman Sachs, had pleaded guilty in 2018 for his involvement in the financial scandal. The company reached a deal with the United States Justice Department to pay more than US$2 billion (RM8.4 billion) for its role.
Ng, who worked under Leissner, 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.
Bloomberg also reported Lim as telling the jury that she has no documentation proving that US$35 million allegedly paid to Ng as an illegal kickback was actually a return on a legitimate investment.
Questioned by the prosecutor, she reportedly said that she has no records showing that a payment made to her offshore account was for an investment she had made earlier with Leissner’s then wife Judy Chan in China.
“When you invest in China, there’s no point for documents,” Lim was quoted as saying. “Even if I have a document, where do I go to enforce it?”
Lim reportedly said that she and her brother, who are both lawyers, didn’t ask questions about the investment and that Chan never told her exactly how much it was worth.
Last month, Leissner had told the court that it was “greed and ambition” that motivated his involvement in the 1MDB deal.
He said bringing 1MDB’s multi-million-dollar deal with the US investment bank “instantaneously made us heroes”.
He alleged that Ng had in 2008 fostered a relationship with fugitive Low Taek Jho, who was then the intermediary between Goldman and 1MDB, Reuters reported.
It later led to Goldman selling US$6.5 billion in bonds for 1MDB and making US$600 million in fees. – The Vibes, March 30, 2022
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