IPOH, April 9 — United States (US) eastern district of New York attorney Breon Peace today said that the verdict on former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng, who was found guilty of bribery charges and money laundering by the US jury, is a powerful message to all criminals who commit financial crimes.
Peace said that those who commit financial crimes motivated by greed will be eventually caught, prosecuted and convicted like Ng and will face a long prison sentence.
“The Federal Jury in Brooklyn convicted Ng of participating in a bribery and money laundering scheme related to a Malaysian investment development fund known as 1MDB.
“The scheme was massive in its scale. The defendant and his co-conspirators embezzled billions of dollars from the fund. It was brazen in its execution,” he said in a short video statement uploaded on YouTube.
Peace said that today’s verdict is a victory for not only the rule of law but for also the people of Malaysia for whom the fund was supposed to help raise money for projects in their country’s economy.
He said that Ng obtained lucrative business for his employer by bribing a dozen government officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi.
“The defendant and his crony saw 1MDB not as an entity to do good for the people of Malaysia but as a piggy bank to enrich themselves with piles of money siphoned from the fund.
“Between 2012 and 2013, Ng received more than 35 million dollars in kickbacks for his role in the scheme to steal and launder billions of dollars from 1MDB, including funds 1MDB raised in 2012 and 2013 through three bond transactions and to use that money for bribes,” he said.
Peace also said that Ng conspired to circumvent Goldman Sachs’s internal accounting control to ensure the bank approves the three bond deals that were critical for the scheme.
“Ng conspired with others to launder the proceeds through the United States financial systems by purchasing among other things, luxury real estate in New York, valuable artwork, jewellery and funding Hollywood films like the Wolf of Wall Street,” he said.
Earlier, the prosecutor said Ng, Goldman’s former top investment banker for Malaysia, helped his former boss Tim Leissner embezzle money from the fund — which was founded to pursue development projects in the South-east Asian country — launder the proceeds and bribe officials to win business for Goldman.
Ng, 49, had pleaded not guilty to conspiring to launder money and violating an anti-corruption law.
His lawyers said Leissner, who pleaded guilty to similar charges in 2018 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors’ investigation, falsely implicated Ng in the hopes of receiving a lenient sentence.
The jury convicted Ng of two counts of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Deliberations began on Tuesday after a nearly two-month trial in federal court in Brooklyn.
Ng is the first, and likely only, person to face trial in the United States over the scheme. Goldman in 2020 paid a nearly US$3 billion (RM12 billion) fine and its Malaysian unit agreed to plead guilty.
Jho Low, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the scheme, was indicted alongside Ng in 2018 but remains at large.
