Former Goldman banker in Asia pleads guilty in conspiracy case,

Bank arranged bond offerings that helped wealth fund 1MDB raise more than $6B

A former senior Goldman Sachs banker in Asia pleaded guilty to U.S. bribery and money laundering charges and his deputy was arrested in Malaysia, as federal prosecutors in Brooklyn laid out conspiracy allegations related to Goldman Sachs’s lucrative fundraising for Malaysian wealth fund 1MDB.

Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, the alleged mastermind of a scheme to siphon billions of dollars from the fund, was charged in absentia. He is accused of conspiring with Roger Ng, then a Goldman Sachs banker, to launder billions of dollars embezzled from 1MDB, known formally as 1Malaysia Development Bhd. Former senior Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner pleaded guilty to conspiring to launder money and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes to Malaysia and Abu Dhabi officials and circumventing Goldman’s internal accounting controls, prosecutors say. He’s been ordered to forfeit $43.7 million (U.S.).

Low, Ng and Leissner are the first individuals to be charged in the U.S. in relation to the scandal at 1MDB. Goldman Sachs arranged bond offerings that helped the fund raise more than $6 billion, much of which, according to international au- thorities, was squirreled away in private accounts and used to buy yachts, paintings and highend real estate.

Prosecutors alleged bribes and kickbacks were paid in connection with Goldman’s bond offerings on 1MDB’s behalf, which generated some $600 million in fees for the bank. Such payments were “known to Ng, Leissner and other employees” of the bank, according to prosecutors. Prosecutors say that one of the people who knew about the payments was an Italian national working for the bank in Asia — a description that matches that of Andrea Vella. Leissner admitted Thursday that he bribed officials in two countries — Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates — to get bond deals for Goldman Sachs. He admitted that he and others arranged the 1MDB fundraising as bond offerings, because it would generate higher fees for the bank than other fundraising.