NEW YORK – Roger Ng, the only Goldman Sachs banker to go to trial over the global 1Malaysia Development Bhd scandal, was found guilty for his role in the looting of the Malaysian fund.
Ng, 49, was convicted of all three counts in the case, including conspiring to violate United States anti-bribery laws and conspiring to launder money, reported Bloomberg.
He faces as many as 30 years in prison.
The verdict is the result of an eight-week federal trial in Brooklyn, New York, that featured startling confessions from Tim Leissner, Ng’s boss at the time.
Leissner, who pleaded guilty and was the key witness against Ng, admitted on the stand to telling a raft of personal and professional lies in the plunder of 1MDB, for which Goldman arranged a trio of bond deals.
Once Goldman’s Southeast Asia chairman, Leissner was the highest-ranking Goldman banker to plead guilty to the scheme to steal from 1MDB in return for more than US$60 million (RM253.3 million) in kickbacks.
Ng was the firm’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia. His trial revealed new details of the scheme, in which Low Taek Jho hustled the stolen billions out of 1MDB immediately after each bond deal Goldman completed for the fund, according to testimony from prosecution witnesses.
Central to the government’s case was an FBI chart showing that Leissner sent US$35 million of the booty to a shell company controlled by Ng’s wife. The FBI said she later spent US$300,000 on diamond jewellery and US$20,000 on a gold hourglass.
Ng was charged with two counts of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and one count of conspiring to commit money laundering.
The US, which called 26 witnesses, argued that Ng and Leissner concealed the fraud from their superiors at Goldman, which made more than US$600 million arranging the three 1MDB bond deals in 2012 and 2013.
Goldman paid Leissner at least US$12mil, while Ng got US$3 mil after two of the bond deals closed, the government said.
Leissner, who pleaded guilty in 2018, spent 10 days on the witness stand, more than five of them under withering cross-examination by defence lawyer Marc Agnifilo, who called him a “cunning liar”.
In addition to his own kickbacks, Leissner testified, he paid Ng more than US$35 million, which prosecutors said was laundered through a series of offshore entities.
The former Goldman star banker told the jury that he and Ng attended a February 2012 meeting at Low’s London home in which he said the financier charted out which Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials would receive bribes.
Low told Ng and Leissner they would also be “taken care of”, Leissner testified. After the meeting, Leissner said, he was “motivated” because he wanted to be “a hero” for Goldman, and Ng was “happy he was going to be paid some money”.
On cross-examination, Agnifilo noted that Leissner first mentioned such a chart to the FBI in 2021, almost three years after he began talking to the bureau.
The defence also cited a 2010 report that said Ng raised “red flags” and gave “negative feedback” about Low and said he didn’t find the financier’s claims about his wealth “credible”.
Agnifilo argued that Leissner falsely implicated Ng and lied repeatedly to gain favour with prosecutors.
The defence called only a handful of witnesses – notably Ng’s wife, Hwee Bin Lim, who testified that the US$35 million infusion prosecutors called a kickback was for an unrelated transaction in China with Leissner’s former wife.
The offshore entities were in Lim’s mother’s name, records show.
Prosecutors argued that emails linked to these accounts showed that while Lim’s mother was the beneficial owner, Ng and his wife controlled the funds.
Soon after investigations into 1MDB were launched in Malaysia and Singapore, Ng also deleted a series of email accounts he had used to communicate with Low and others involved in the scheme, according to the US. – The Vibes, April 9, 2022
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