A U.S. jury charged Roger Ng, the former Goldman Sachs banker for corruption charges in his loot of Malaysia’s 1MDB development fund. It marks the biggest financial scandal in history, said IFR Asia. Ng was Goldman Sachs’s top investment banker specialized in Malaysia. The prosecutors charged him for conspiring to violate an anti-corruption law and launder money.
The court said he attempted to help his former boss Tim Leissner to loot the money from the fund. Then in order to win Goldman, he bribed to win the business. Ng denied the accusation. His lawyer points at Leissner for being guilty of similar charges in 2018. The boss agreed to cooperate with the investigation.
In Malaysia, 1MDB fund is a development fund to pursue development projects in the South-East Asia country. Ng received conviction of two counts of conspiracy. First, he violates the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act through bribery, Second, he is involved in circumvention of Goldman’s internal accounting controls. In addition there is also one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York said that the verdict means the law and Malaysians win. 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, stated him. Margo Brodie, the U.S. The District Judge predicts that Ng would be the subject to a curfew pending sentencing.
Agnifilo told reporters that this case is too tough and hard to win.
Prosecutors have identified that Goldman helped 1MDB raise for $6.5bn through three bond sales. The $4.5bn was for government officials, bankers, and their associates through bribes and kickbacks. Ng would be the only person facing this kind of trial. In 2020, Goldman paid nearly $3bn fine.
