Former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng was sentenced to 10 years in prison 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 fees stem from some $6.5 billion in bonds that Goldman helped 1MDB, which was based to finance improvement initiatives in Malaysia, promote in 2012 and 2013.
U.S. prosecutors stated $4.5 billion of that sum was embezzled by officers, bankers and their associates, in one of many largest scandals in Wall Street 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 Street,” in accordance to the Department of Justice.
U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie, who imposed the sentence, stated Ng and his co-defendants “effectively stole money” meant for infrastructure and financial improvement initiatives to help the Malaysian individuals.
“There is a critical need to deter crimes of pure greed like this one,” Brodie stated.
The 1MDB scandal additionally rocked Malaysian politics. Former Prime Minister Najib Razak is serving a 12-year prison 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 sentence Ng to 15 years in prison, calling him a “deeply corrupt banker” and arguing a stiff sentence was needed to dissuade different monetary professionals from bribing officers to win enterprise.
“Foreign corruption undermines the public’s confidence in international markets and institutions,” prosecutors wrote. “It destroys people’s faith in their leaders and it is deeply unfair to everybody else who plays by the rules.”
In his personal sentencing request on Feb. 25, Ng requested that he be given no prison time and be allowed to return to Malaysia. He spent six months in a Malaysian prison earlier than waiving his proper to contest extradition to the United States in 2018.
Ng had pleaded not responsible and argued that $35 million in kickback funds he was accused of receiving was really 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 stated 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.