A federal prosecutor told jurors Monday that they had received enough evidence to convict a former Goldman Sachs banker for his role in one of the largest international money laundering and bribery schemes, even without the testimony of the government’s key witness.
“You already know that the defendant is guilty from other evidence in the case,” Alixandra E. Smith, an assistant US attorney, said during the government’s closing statement in the trial of Roger Ng in federal court in Brooklyn.
Mr Ng is accused of receiving $35 million in illegal bribes from a plan to steal billions of dollars from the once-large Malaysian state fund known as 1MDB.
During the trial, Tim Leissner, a former Goldman associate who pleaded guilty and became the government’s key witness, emerged as a controversial figure, and unsurprisingly, federal prosecutors don’t want the jury to focus too much on his testimony. .
During six days of a grueling cross-examination, he admitted to lying a lot in life. He was forced to admit that he initially lied to federal agents, to his colleagues at Goldman, and to his wives and girlfriends.
But Ms. Smith said Mr. Leissner wasn’t lying when he testified in federal court in Brooklyn about the key facts of the plan, which was funded by a series of bonds Goldman arranged for the 1MDB fund.
When it came time for Mr. Ng to present his closing arguments, he wasted no time calling out Mr. leisner. The attorney, Marc Agnifilo, said that Mr. Leissner was a man who “will lie when it suits him”. He said that despite what the prosecution had said, the government without Mr. Leissner the Mr. Ng could not relate to the conspiracy to steal billions from the 1MDB fund.
“There’s no evidence linking Roger,” said Mr. Agnifilo. “There is no dirty email. Not a bad text.”
By contrast, said Mr Agnifilo, the jury had seen text messages instructing Mr Leissner who to pay a bribe to by Jho Low, a flamboyant Malaysian businessman who was the architect of the plan and is a fugitive believed to be living in China.
Mr Agnifilo said Mr Leissner had lied to the jury, just as he had done other times in his life.
“It’s a lifetime of lying,” said Mr. Agnifilo. “This is lying on a rare level.”
Last week, the jury heard testimony from Mr. Ng’s wife, Hwee Bin Lim, who said the $35 million she and her husband received were the proceeds of a $6 million investment she made with the second wife of the Mr. Leissner, Judy Chan.
The defense argued that Mr. Ng and his wife were unaware that some of the money Ms Chan transferred to them had been looted from 1MDB. Mr. Leissner has acknowledged that he received tens of millions of dollars in illegal proceeds within the scheme.
The case could go before the jury as early as Tuesday afternoon.
