Roger Ng, Bribery and Money Laundering, New York 2023

A former Goldman Sachs investment banker has been convicted of conspiring to commit bribery and money laundering in a multibillion-dollar scheme involving Malaysia’s state-owned investment and development fund 1MDB.

Roger Ng, a former Managing Director of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., was found guilty of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) by paying bribes to a dozen foreign officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, conspiring to violate the FCPA by circumventing the internal accounting controls of Goldman Sachs, and conspiring to launder billions of dollars related to the scheme.

The scheme involved corruption of high-level foreign officials in Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates, according to Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, Jr. of the Criminal Division.

Ng was employed as a Managing Director by various subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs and acted as an agent and employee of Goldman Sachs from approximately 2005 to May 2014, and was also a stockholder of Goldman Sachs.

According to evidence presented at trial, between approximately 2009 and 2014, Ng and his co-conspirators laundered billions of dollars misappropriated and fraudulently diverted from 1MDB, including funds 1MDB raised in 2012 and 2013 through three bond transactions it executed with Goldman Sachs.

“Today’s verdict is a resounding victory for justice and for the people of Malaysia who are the victims of this massive scheme carried out in a frenzy of greed by the defendant and his co-conspirators to get rich by stealing millions of dollars from the 1MDB fund intended to benefit that country’s economy,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace for the Eastern District of New York.

The conviction demonstrates the cooperation of law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies around the world to combat foreign corruption, according to Special Agent in Charge Ryan L. Korner of IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), Los Angeles Field Office.

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