Ng left out of several 1MDB meetings, say his lawyers

Roger Ng - Filepic

NEW YORK: Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker Roger Ng wasn’t always included in meetings held by key players in the multibillion-dollar looting of 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB), according to testimony presented by his defence team.

Ng, the only Goldman banker to go on trial in the 1MDB scandal, is accused of plotting with his former boss Tim Leissner and Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, better known as Jho Low, to pull off a fraud in which billions of dollars were siphoned from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

Leissner, who pleaded guilty and testified against Ng, said he collected more than US$60mil (RM252mil) in kickbacks from Low and paid Ng more than US$35.1mil (RM147.7mil).

But as Ng’s lawyers began presenting his defence on Thursday, they tried to show that Leissner had met multiple times with Low and others involved in the 1MDB fraud when Ng wasn’t present.

“Please don’t tell Roger about our meeting with the friend,” Leissner wrote in a Blackberry message to another Goldman banker in 2012 at a time when Leissner, Low and Ng were all in Hong Kong after one of the 1MDB bond transactions closed.

Shortly afterward, an offshore account in the name of Leissner’s wife paid a US$2mil (RM8.4mil) bribe to an adviser of then-Malaysian prime minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak, records show.

The next day, Low and Leissner each flew to Las Vegas for a gala birthday bash, according to Katelyn Giesler, an assistant at the law firm of defence lawyer Teny Geragos.

While Leissner was listed among Malaysian guests for Low’s event, Ng’s name wasn’t, Giesler said.

Neither was Ng aboard a yacht on the Mediterranean chartered by Low in July 2013 when the financier presented Najib’s wife, Datin Seri Rosmah Mansor, with a 22-carat pink diamond necklace purchased with 1MDB funds, Giesler testified.

Ng also didn’t join Leissner and Najib for dinner in San-Tropez, France, a few days later, she said, noting that records show he wasn’t even in Europe at the time.

Prosecutors rested their case earlier on Thursday after their final witness, an FBI agent, walked the jury through scores of e-mails and other records the US government says show Ng conspired with Low.

Trial testimony resumes on Monday. — Bloomberg