Malaysia is investigating how former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Roger Ng helped arrange billions of dollars in bond sales for sovereign state fund 1MDB, according to the police.
(Bloomberg) — Malaysia is investigating how former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker Roger Ng helped arrange billions of dollars in bond sales for sovereign state fund 1MDB, according to the police.
Malaysia’s police are counting on Ng’s cooperation to recover as much as possible from the billions looted from the fund during the previous decade. Ng, a Malaysian, is under police protection after arriving from the US on Sunday, Inspector General of Police Razarudin Husain said on Tuesday.
“We hope that he will cooperate on the asset recovery,” Razarudin told reporters in Kuala Lumpur. “There is a lot of assets to be returned.”
Goldman made $593 million working on three bond sales that raised $6.5 billion for 1MDB in 2012 and 2013. Under a July 2020 settlement, Malaysia dropped all criminal charges against the bank over its role in the scandal in exchange for a $2.5 billion cash payment and for the guaranteed return of $1.4 billion of seized 1MDB assets.
A Brooklyn federal jury convicted Ng of conspiring with his former Goldman boss Tim Leissner and financier Low Taek Jho, known as Jho Low, in the looting of 1MDB. Prosecutors said Ng received millions of dollars in kickbacks from the bond deals Goldman Sachs arranged for 1MDB.
Ng was scheduled to begin a 10-year prison sentence on Oct. 6, but US officials allowed the sentence to be deferred so that he could return to the Southeast Asian country and help with its investigation.
Malaysia will also seek Ng’s assistance in locating Low, said the country’s police chief. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has accused the fugitive businessman of stealing $1.42 billion from the bond transactions that Goldman arranged for 1MDB. Low faces criminal charges in Malaysia’s court.
Investigations with Ng have just started and the police have yet to determine the value of the assets they could recover, according to Razarudin. Police had received intelligence that the former banker’s safety was under threat, he added.
Malaysian authorities are also working with the US Department of Justice and FBI to recover assets from ex-1MDB lawyer Jasmine Loo, he said. About 93.2 million ringgit in Loo’s assets — purchased using 1MDB funds — were in the form of two properties in Singapore and accounts in the US, according to Razarudin.
–With assistance from Anisah Shukry.
(Updates with further details from sixth paragraph onwards.)
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2023 Bloomberg L.P.