KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia is considering asking the US Department of Justice (DoJ) to get Goldman Sachs to return nearly US$600mil (RM2.38bil) in fees it earned from bonds raised for scandal-tainted 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), two sources familiar with the matter said.
Malaysian authorities want to ask the DoJ, which is pursuing a corruption and money laundering probe at 1MDB, to get Goldman to disgorge profits it made from the sale, after which Malaysia would claim the money, both sources said.
No formal request has been made to the DoJ but top officials are actively discussing the plan within the Government, the sources added.
“There have been no official requests yet, but this is being discussed,” said a Malaysian government source.
A spokesman for Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said the minister had no comment on the matter.
A spokesman for Goldman Sachs declined to comment and the DoJ was not available outside US business hours.
The US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A third source familiar with the matter has said Malaysia is also preparing an arrest warrant for Roger Ng, a former Goldman banker.
Goldman raised nearly US$6.5bil (RM26bil) in three bond sales between 2012 and 2013 for 1MDB.
The US bank earned almost US$600mil for the three deals – an amount critics say is far in excess of the normal 1-2% fee a bank could expect for helping sell bonds.
More than US$2.5bil (RM9.9bil) raised from those bonds was misappropriated by high-level 1MDB officials, their relatives and associates, according to DoJ civil lawsuits filed in a US court in 2016.
Goldman has always maintained that it did nothing wrong. — Reuters
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