Ex-Goldman banker’s 1MDB loot bought US$20,000 hourglass, diamonds, says FBI agent

NEW YORK: An FBI agent told a jury how he traced $35 million siphoned from 1MDB diverted to a Goldman Sachs banker and used to buy a $20,000 gold-plated hourglass and $300,000 in diamond jewelry.

Testifying on Tuesday at the foreign-bribery trial of ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker Roger Ng, Agent Sean Fern said he was able to track the funds prosecutors say Ng got as part of a global scheme to steal billions of dollars from sovereign wealth fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

As the U.S. begins to wrap up its case after five weeks of testimony, prosecutors called Fern to describe how Malaysian financier Jho Low -- the alleged mastermind of the scheme and now a fugitive in the case -- drew off hundreds of millions of dollars from 1MDB bond deals to pay bribes to officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi as well as kickbacks to Goldman bankers who helped him.

Goldman arranged the bond deals, and Ng is accused of conspiring with his former boss Tim Leissner and Low in the scam.

Leissner, who has pleaded guilty and testified for the government, said he earned more than $60 million for his role in the plot, and directed that Ng be paid $35.1 million from an account controlled by Leissner’s former wife, Judy Chan.

Fern said he tracked how, in the weeks after the first 1MDB bond deal closed in May 2012, at least $24.4 million was directed from Judy Chan Leissner’s account to an offshore account controlled by Ng’s mother-in-law, Tan Kim Chin.

Two more transactions in 2013 sent $10.7 million from accounts under Judy Chan Leissner’s control to the offshore account Tan controlled, he testified.

Fern told the jurors that some of the 1MDB money was used to buy $300,500 in diamond jewelry, including a six-carat ring, and a $20,000 gold-plated hourglass.

Neither Judy Chan nor her mother was charged in the case.

The case is U.S. v. Low Taek Jho, 18-cr-538, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn). - Bloomberg