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 supporting loot billions of pounds from Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign prosperity fund.

Prosecutors say Roger Ng, Goldman Sachs Team Inc’s former leading expenditure banker for Malaysia, aided his then-manager Tim Leissner embezzle income from the fund — which was launched to go after improvement projects in the Southeast Asian place — launder the proceeds and bribe officials to win business enterprise for Goldman.

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

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The rates stemmed from one particular of the most important money scandals in historical past.

Prosecutors have claimed Goldman aided 1MDB raise $6.5 billion via three bond product sales, but that $4.5 billion was diverted to governing administration officials, bankers and their associates as a result of bribes and kickbacks in between 2009 and 2015.

Ng is the 1st, and possible only, person to experience trial in the United States more than the scheme. Goldman in 2020 paid out a nearly $3 billion fine and its Malaysian device agreed to plead guilty.

Deliberations started on Tuesday soon after a just about two-thirty day period demo in federal courtroom in Brooklyn.

Jurors listened to nine days of testimony from Leissner, who claimed he sent Ng $35 million in kickbacks. Leissner claimed the adult men agreed to notify financial institutions a “go over story” that the funds was from a reputable company undertaking between their wives.

Ng’s wife, Hwee Bin Lim, afterwards testified for the defense that the business undertaking was, in reality, respectable. She stated she invested $6 million in the mid-2000s in a Chinese company owned by the relatives of Leissner’s then-spouse, Judy Chan, and that the $35 million was her return on that expenditure.

Ng’s attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said in his closing argument on Monday that Leissner could not be trusted. A prosecutor, Alixandra Smith, mentioned in her summation that Leissner’s testimony was backed up by other proof.

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

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Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York enhancing by Jonathan Oatis

Our Criteria: The Thomson Reuters Belief Rules.

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