A former Goldman Sachs banker, Roger Ng, was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday for aiding a corruption scheme that looted billions of dollars from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund, 1MDB.
The jury in federal court in Brooklyn found Roger, who was the head of an investment bank in Malaysia, guilty of helping his former boss Tim Leissner embezzle money from the fund, launder the profits and bribe government officials to close deals.
The convictions stem from about $6.5 billion in bonds that the bank helped 1MDB, founded to finance development projects in the country, sell in 2012 and 2013.
Of that amount, $4.5 billion was embezzled by authorities, bankers and their associates, in one of the biggest scandals in Wall Street history, according to prosecutors in the case.
The funds were used to purchase luxury real estate, jewelry and artwork and finance the Hollywood movie “The Wolf of Wall Street,” according to the Justice Department.
US District Judge Margo Brodie, who imposed the sentence, said Roger Ng and his co-defendants “effectively stole money” earmarked for infrastructure and economic development projects to help the Malaysian people.
“There is a critical need to stop crimes of sheer greed like this,” the judge said.
The 1MDB scandal has also rocked Malaysian politics. Former Prime Minister Najib Razak is serving a 12-year prison sentence after being convicted by a country court of taking $10 million from a former 1MDB unit.
Najib has always denied wrongdoing.
In a lawsuit last week, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn urged the judge to sentence Roger to 15 years in prison, calling him a “deeply corrupt banker” and arguing that a stiff sentence was necessary to dissuade other financial professionals from bribing officials to win business.
“Foreign corruption undermines public confidence in international markets and institutions,” the prosecutors wrote. “It destroys people’s faith in their leaders and is deeply unfair to everyone else who plays by the rules.”
In his own sentencing motion on February 25, Roger Ng asked that he not be sentenced to prison and that he be allowed to return to Malaysia. He spent six months in a prison in the country before waiving his right to challenge extradition to the United States in 2018.
Roger pleaded not guilty and argued that the $35 million in bribe payments he was accused of receiving were actually a return on an investment his wife had made.
Tim Leissner, former head of Goldman Sachs in Southeast Asia, pleaded guilty and testified against Roger Ng as part of a cooperation agreement. He has not yet been convicted.
Jho Low, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the scheme, was indicted alongside Roger in 2018 but remains at large. Malaysian officials have said Low is in China, which Beijing denies.
In October 2020, Goldman agreed to pay $2.9 billion and its Malaysia unit pleaded guilty to a corruption charge.
Source: CNN Brasil
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