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 former Goldman Sachs (GS.N) banker accused of aiding loot billions of bucks from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign prosperity fund.

Prosecutors say Roger Ng, Goldman Sachs Group Inc’s previous prime expenditure banker for Malaysia, aided his then-boss Tim Leissner embezzle income from the fund — which was established to pursue progress initiatives in the Southeast Asian state — launder the proceeds and bribe officers to acquire enterprise for Goldman.

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

The costs stemmed from a person of the greatest financial scandals in heritage.

Prosecutors have reported Goldman served 1MDB raise $6.5 billion by a few bond gross sales, but that $4.5 billion was diverted to federal government officials, bankers and their associates via bribes and kickbacks between 2009 and 2015.

Ng is the first, and possible only, person to facial area trial in the United States about the scheme. Goldman in 2020 compensated a nearly $3 billion great and its Malaysian unit agreed to plead guilty.

Deliberations started on Tuesday just after a almost two-thirty day period trial in federal court docket in Brooklyn.

Jurors heard 9 days of testimony from Leissner, who explained he sent Ng $35 million in kickbacks. Leissner mentioned the adult males agreed to tell financial institutions a “include story” that the funds was from a authentic enterprise venture amongst their wives.

Ng’s wife, Hwee Bin Lim, later on testified for the protection that the business venture was, in simple fact, authentic. She stated she invested $6 million in the mid-2000s in a Chinese corporation owned by the family of Leissner’s then-wife, Judy Chan, and that the $35 million was her return on that expense.

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

Jho Lower, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the plan, was indicted alongside Ng in 2018 but stays at big.

Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York editing by Jonathan Oatis

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