The Wolf of Wall Street will spend the next decade in a federal pen.
Former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Thursday for helping to plunder billions of dollars from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.
A jury in a federal court in Brooklyn found Ng, Goldman’s former head of investment banking in Malaysia, guilty of helping his former boss Tim Leissner embezzle money from the fund, laundering proceeds and bribing government officials to realize business.
The allegations stem from roughly $6.5 billion in bonds that Goldman helped sell in 2012 and 2013 to 1MDB, set as much as finance development projects in Malaysia.
US prosecutors said $4.5 billion of that sum was embezzled by officials, bankers and their associates in one among the biggest scandals in Wall Street history. The funds were used to buy high-end real estate, jewelry and artwork, and to finance the Hollywood movie The Wolf of Wall Street, in keeping with the Department of Justice.
The scandal also rocked Malaysian politics. Former Prime Minister Najib Razak is serving a 12-year prison sentence after being convicted by a Malaysian court of receiving $10 million from a former 1MDB unit.
Najib has consistently denied wrongdoing.
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In last week’s filing, Brooklyn federal prosecutors called on Brodie to sentence Ng to fifteen years in prison, calling him a “deeply corrupt banker” and arguing that the harsh sentence was vital to dissuade other financial professionals from bribing officials to get business.
“Foreign corruption undermines public confidence in international markets and institutions,” the prosecutors wrote. “That is destroying people’s faith in their leaders and is deeply unfair to everyone else who follows the rules.”
In his own sentencing motion, Ng asked to not be sentenced to prison because he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder after spending six months in a hellish Malaysian prison before waiving his right to challenge his extradition to the United States in 2018.
He desired to be allowed to return to Malaysia.
The post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered from “is prone to be exacerbated by confinement and any experiences that reactivate his trauma,” his lawyer Marc Agnifilo wrote on Wednesday, saying that further incarceration would aggravate his severe mental health.
Ng pleaded not guilty and argued that the $35 million in bribes he was accused of was actually a return on an investment made by his wife.
“I’m ashamed of how this has affected my family, but I’m overwhelmed by their support for my innocence despite being charged and convicted,” he said. reported the Wall Street Journal.
Leissner was Goldman’s head of Southeast Asia.
He pleaded guilty and testified against Ng as a part of the cooperation agreement.
He’s as a consequence of be sentenced in September.
Jho Low, a Malaysian financier and suspected mastermind of the scheme, was indicted together with Ng in 2018 but stays at large.
Malaysian officials said Low is in China, which Beijing denies.
In October 2020, Goldman agreed to pay $2.9 billion, with its Malaysian unit pleading guilty to corruption charges.
With postal wires