U.S. jury deliberates in ex-Goldman banker’s 1MDB corruption trial

NEW YORK, April 8 (Reuters) – A U.S. jury resumed deliberations on Friday in the trial of a previous Goldman Sachs (GS.N) banker accused of assisting loot billions of pounds from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.

Prosecutors say Roger Ng, Goldman Sachs Team Inc’s previous major investment banker for Malaysia, helped his then-manager Tim Leissner embezzle income from the fund — which was established to go after growth tasks in the Southeast Asian country — launder the proceeds and bribe officers to earn company for Goldman.

Ng, 49, has pleaded not responsible to conspiring to launder money and violating an anti-corruption regulation. His attorneys say Leissner, who pleaded responsible to similar charges in 2018 and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors’ investigation, falsely implicated Ng in the hopes of getting a lenient sentence.

The charges stemmed from a single of the most significant monetary scandals in history.

Prosecutors have claimed Goldman helped 1MDB raise $6.5 billion via 3 bond sales, but that $4.5 billion was diverted to government officials, bankers and their associates through bribes and kickbacks between 2009 and 2015.

Ng is the initial, and probably only, particular person to encounter trial in the United States in excess of the scheme. Goldman in 2020 paid a approximately $3 billion high-quality and its Malaysian device agreed to plead guilty.

Deliberations started on Tuesday just after a approximately two-thirty day period demo in federal court in Brooklyn.

Jurors listened to 9 days of testimony from Leissner, who explained he despatched Ng $35 million in kickbacks. Leissner stated the males agreed to inform banking companies a “cover tale” that the revenue was from a legit business venture between their wives.

Ng’s spouse, Hwee Bin Lim, later on testified for the protection that the enterprise venture was, in actuality, legitimate. She stated she invested $6 million in the mid-2000s in a Chinese enterprise owned by the family of Leissner’s then-wife, Judy Chan, and that the $35 million was her return on that investment decision.

Ng’s law firm, Marc Agnifilo, mentioned in his closing argument on Monday that Leissner could not be trustworthy. A prosecutor, Alixandra Smith, reported in her summation that Leissner’s testimony was backed up by other evidence.

Jho Low, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the scheme, was indicted alongside Ng in 2018 but continues to be at large.

Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York modifying by Jonathan Oatis

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