London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Sep 19, 2025

1MDB scandal: bribery and bigamy loom large in ex-Goldman Sachs banker’s trial

1MDB scandal: bribery and bigamy loom large in ex-Goldman Sachs banker’s trial

Roger Ng pleads not guilty to helping launder millions of dollars looted from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund
On the first day of a trial over the multibillion-dollar looting of a Malaysian government fund, US prosecutors on Monday accused a former Goldman Sachs banker of taking $35m in kickbacks as his defense team slammed the prosecution’s star witness as a bigamist who used their client as a fall guy.

Roger Ng, Goldman’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia, is charged with conspiring to launder money and violating anti-bribery law in his dealings with Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund.

The trial is renewing scrutiny of Goldman’s role in the international scandal that led to a 12-year jail sentence for Malaysia’s former prime minister Najib Razak.

“The defendant saw an opportunity to make millions of dollars by cheating, and he took it,” Brent Wible, a lawyer with the US Department of Justice, said in an opening statement on Monday.

Ng has pleaded not guilty and his lawyer has said he is a “fall guy” for one of the biggest financial scandals in Wall Street history.

The trial in Brooklyn federal court could last up to six weeks.

The scandal stems from some $6.5bn in bonds that Goldman helped 1MDB, launched by Razak to spur economic growth, sell from 2009 to 2014.

US prosecutors say Goldman earned $600m in fees from the deals, but that about $4.5bn of the funds raised was embezzled.

The bank in 2020 paid a $2.3bn fine, returned $600m in ill-gotten gains, and agreed for its Malaysian subsidiary to plead guilty in US court as part of a deal, known as a deferred prosecution agreement (DPA).

Wible said Ng helped two co-conspirators – his former boss, Timothy Leissner, and a Malaysian intermediary, Jho Low – launder funds embezzled from 1MDB and used some of the stolen money to bribe officials in the south-east Asian country to win business for Goldman.

Ng received $35m in kickbacks from Leissner, Wible said.

Leissner, a former partner for Goldman Sachs in Asia, in 2018 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), in part by helping to pay $1.6bn in bribes. He is expected to testify as a government witness against Ng.

Wible said Leissner, who has not yet been sentenced, would testify against Ng as part of a cooperation agreement with prosecutors and as a result would get a lighter punishment. But Wible said Leissner’s testimony would be backed up by other evidence.

Defense lawyer Marc Agnifilo countered that Ng had no role in the scheme perpetrated by Low and Leissner and that he even warned Goldman management not to trust Low. He said the funds prosecutors called kickbacks in fact belonged to Ng’s wife and were derived from a business venture she had with Leissner’s ex-wife.

Agnifilo focused his opening statement largely on undermining Leissner, who is expected to testify for the government.

“Tim Leissner uses people,” Agnifilo told jurors, saying Leissner was “married to two different women at the same time, twice”.

“They’re not partners-in-crime. There’s a gulf between these two men a mile wide,” he said. “Leissner uses people. You will see this time and time again. He is trying to use my client ... to serve his jail time.”

Low, who was indicted alongside Ng in 2018, has not been arrested by US or Malaysian authorities. Malaysia has said he is in China, which Beijing has denied.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
DeepSeek Claims R1 Model Trained for only $294,000, Sparking Global Debate Over China’s AI Capabilities
SoftBank Vision Fund to Cut Nearly Twenty Percent of Staff in Bold AI Strategy Shift
Intel’s Next-Gen Manufacturing Gets a Lifeline from Nvidia’s Strategic $5B Deal
Erika Kirk Elected CEO of Turning Point USA After Husband Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
Massive Strikes in France Pressure Macron and New PM on Austerity Proposals
Trump Seeks Supreme Court Permission to Remove Fed Governor Lisa Cook
Hillary Clinton’s Reckless Rhetoric Fuels Division After Charlie Kirk’s Assassination
NASDAQ Rises to Record as Intel Soars More Than 20%, Nvidia Gains 3%
Nvidia’s $5 Billion Bet on Intel Reshapes AI Hardware Landscape
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Trump’s Quip on Biden and Google Lawsuit Revives Debate Over Antitrust Legacy
Macron and his wife to provide 'scientific photographic evidence' that she is a real woman
US Tech Giants Pledge Billions to UK AI Infrastructure Following Starmer's Call
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
DeepMind and OpenAI Achieve Gold at ‘Coding Olympics’ in AI Milestone
SEC Allows Public Companies to Block Investors from Class-Action Lawsuits
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Federal Reserve Cuts Rates by Quarter Point and Signals More to Come
Effective and Impressive Generation Z Protest: Images from the Riots in Nepal
European manufacturers against ban on polluting cars: "The industry may collapse"
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Trump: Cancel quarterly company reports and settle for reporting once every six months
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
US Launches New Pilot Program to Accelerate eVTOL Air Taxi Deployment
Christian Brueckner Released from German Prison after Serving Unrelated Sentence
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Hong Kong Industry Group Calls for HK$20 Billion Support Fund to Ease Property Market Stress
Joe Biden’s Post-Presidency Speaking Fees Face Weak Demand amid Corporate Reluctance
Charlie Kirk's murder will break the left's hateful cancel tactics
Kash Patel erupts at ‘buffoon’ Sen. Adam Schiff over Russiagate: ‘You are the biggest fraud’
Homeland Security says Emmy speech ‘fanning the flames of hatred’ after Einbinder’s ‘F— ICE’ remark
Charlie Kirk’s Alleged Assassin Tyler Robinson Faces Death Penalty as Charges Formally Announced
Actor, director, environmentalist Robert Redford dies at 89
The conservative right spreads westward: a huge achievement for 'Alternative for Germany' in local elections
JD Vance Says There Is “No Unity” with Those Who Celebrate Charlie Kirk’s Killing, and he is right!
Trump sues the 'New York Times' for an astronomical sum of 15 billion dollars
Florida Hospital Welcomes Its Largest-Ever Baby: Annan, Nearly Fourteen Pounds at Birth
U.S. and Britain Poised to Finalize Over $10 Billion in High-Tech, Nuclear and Defense Deals During Trump State Visit
China Finds Nvidia Violated Antitrust Laws in Mellanox Deal, Deepens Trade Tensions with US
US Air Force Begins Modifications on Qatar-Donated Jet Amid Plans to Use It as Air Force One
Pope Leo Warns of Societal Crisis Over Mega-CEO Pay, Citing Tesla’s Proposed Trillion-Dollar Package
Poland Green-Lights NATO Deployment in Response to Major Russian Drone Incursion
Elon Musk Retakes Lead as World’s Richest After Brief Ellison Surge
U.S. and China Agree on Framework to Shift TikTok to American Ownership
London Daily Podcast: London Massive Pro Democracy Rally, Musk Support, UK Economic Data and Premier League Results Mark Eventful Weekend
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Le Pen Tightens the Pressure on Macron as France Edges Toward Political Breakdown
Musk calls for new UK government at huge pro-democracy rally in London, but Britons have been brainwashed to obey instead of fighting for their human rights
Elon Musk responds to post calling for the murder of Erika Kirk, widow of Charlie Kirk: 'Either we fight back or they will kill us'
×