KUALA LUMPUR – Soon after the jury started their deliberations into the 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) case involving former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng, they requested to review his wife Lim Hwee Bin’s testimony.
Her testimony, which the defence team said was crucial to the case, detailed that she invested US$6 million (RM25.2 million) in the mid-2000s in a company owned by the family of Judy Chan, then wife of Ng’s boss, Tim Leissner.
Lim testified last week that she was paid US$35.1 million in 2012 and 2013 as a return on the investment. But Leissner, in his witness testimony in early March, alleged that he concocted this “cover story” with former subordinate Ng and their wives to justify the US$35 million in funds.
The jury deliberations will resume today after seven weeks of testimony in a Brooklyn federal court in New York and will decide the fate of Ng – the only former Goldman Sachs employee to go on trial for the 1MDB financial scandal.
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. If convicted, he could face up to 30 years in prison.
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.
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 for its role.
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 now fugitive businessman Low Taek Jho, who was then the intermediary between Goldman and 1MDB, Reuters reported.
It later led to Goldman Sachs selling US$6.5 billion in bonds for 1MDB and making US$600 million in fees.
Low, although charged in absentia in the US and Malaysia, remains at large. – The Vibes, April 6, 2022
