© Reuters. FILE PHOTO: Ex-Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng exits the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse (EDNY) after being discovered responsible for his half serving to embezzle from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund, in Brooklyn, New York, U.S., April 8, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDerm
By Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -Former Goldman Sachs (NYSE:) banker Roger Ng was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Thursday, after he was convicted of serving to loot billions of {dollars} from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.
A jury in Brooklyn federal court docket final April discovered Ng, Goldman’s former head of funding banking in Malaysia, responsible of serving to his former boss Tim Leissner embezzle cash from the fund, launder the proceeds and bribe authorities officers to win enterprise.
The costs stem from some $6.5 billion in bonds that Goldman helped 1MDB, which was based to finance growth tasks in Malaysia, promote in 2012 and 2013.
U.S. prosecutors mentioned $4.5 billion of that sum was embezzled by officers, bankers and their associates, in one of many greatest scandals in Wall Road historical past.
Funds had been used to purchase high-end actual property, jewellery and art work, and finance the Hollywood movie, “The Wolf of Wall Road,” in response to the Division of Justice.
U.S. District Decide Margo Brodie, who imposed the sentence, mentioned Ng and his co-defendants “successfully stole cash” meant for infrastructure and financial growth tasks to assist the Malaysian individuals.
“There’s a important want to discourage crimes of pure greed like this one,” Brodie mentioned.
The 1MDB scandal additionally rocked Malaysian politics. Former Prime Minister Najib Razak is serving a 12-year jail sentence after being convicted by a Malaysian court docket of receiving $10 million from a former 1MDB unit.
Najib has constantly denied wrongdoing.
In a submitting final week, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn urged Brodie to condemn Ng to fifteen years in jail, calling him a “deeply corrupt banker” and arguing a stiff sentence was essential to dissuade different monetary professionals from bribing officers to win enterprise.
“Overseas corruption undermines the general public’s confidence in worldwide markets and establishments,” prosecutors wrote. “It destroys individuals’s religion of their leaders and it’s deeply unfair to everyone else who performs by the foundations.”
In his personal sentencing request on Feb. 25, Ng requested that he be given no jail time and be allowed to return to Malaysia. He spent six months in a Malaysian jail earlier than waiving his proper to contest extradition to the US in 2018.
Ng had pleaded not responsible and argued that $35 million in kickback funds he was accused of receiving was truly a return on an funding his spouse had made.
Leissner had been Goldman’s Southeast Asia chief. He pleaded responsible and testified towards Ng as a part of a cooperation settlement. He has not but been sentenced.
Jho Low, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the scheme, was indicted alongside Ng in 2018 however stays at giant. Malaysian officers have mentioned Low is in China, which Beijing denies.
In October 2020, Goldman agreed to pay $2.9 billion and its Malaysian unit pleaded responsible to a corruption cost.
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