One of the most interesting Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) criminal trials in sometime is ongoing in New York, that of Roger Ng. The lead up to the trial and in trial reporting efforts have been led by Law360and its lead reporter Stewart Bishop and most of information in this post comes from that site. Unfortunately, it is behind a paywall so if you want to follow it going forward you will have to subscribe. According to Bishop, Ng was charged with conspiring to violate the FCPA and money laundering conspiracy along with his employer Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., its former Southeast Asia chairman Tim Leissner and financier Jho Low. The charges were bribery of “Malaysian and Emirati officials and to circumvent the internal accounting controls of Goldman, which underwrote more than $6 billion in bonds issued by 1MDB in three offerings in 2012 and 2013. Leissner pled guilty over his role in the alleged scheme, while Low has remained abroad, out of reach of U.S. authorities for now.”
The prosecution’s case turns almost exclusively on the testimony of Leissner, one of the most pathological liars ever to grace the witness stand. Indeed, Matthew Goldstein, writing in the New York Times, reported this question by Ng’s defense counsel to Leissner, “Do you think you are good at lying?” Leissner demurred on this question but did admit he had “lied a lot”. Goldstein cited to Rebecca Roiphe, a former prosecutor and a professor at New York Law School who specializes in legal ethics, who related “it could be tricky to rely on such a witness, but “it isn’t a fatal blow.”” She said a prosecutor can argue that a witness is “a horrible person” and “a serial liar” who has had “a come-to-Jesus moment. That can work when you have really bad people who have lied a lot,” she said.””
What do Leissner’s admitted lies consist of? Leissner admitted under cross-examination that he had presented “a bogus divorce decree to his now-estranged wife, the model and fashion designer Kimora Lee Simmons, so that she would marry him eight years ago.” Defense counsel also got Leissner to “recount the many ways he deceived his wives, particularly Ms. Simmons. Mr. Leissner admitted that he had used an email account in the name of his second wife, Judy Chan, to communicate with Ms. Simmons while dating her, and that he was still married to Ms. Chan when he and Ms. Simmons were wed. (Mr. Leissner was also legally married to another woman when he married Ms. Chan.)” Leissner also admitted that some $10MM of his ill-gotten gain from 1MDB was used to “buy a $10 million house for one of his girlfriends (while married) so she would not go to the authorities.”
Of course, Leissner now maintains he is “telling the truth about Mr. Ng, who prosecutors say helped line the pockets of officials in Abu Dhabi and powerful Malaysians close to then Prime Minister Najib Razak.” Leissner testified “Mr. Ng was his primary contact at Goldman, which earned roughly $600 million in fees to arrange the $6.5 billion in bond deals for the fund. “Roger made him one of his clients,” Mr. Leissner said. He testified that Mr. Ng had set up many of the meetings to plan the scheme, including one at Mr. Low’s London apartment during which Mr. Low drew boxes on a piece of paper with the names of all the officials that would get bribes and gifts. For helping arrange the payments, Mr. Leissner said, he raked in more than $80 million. Prosecutors contend that Mr. Ng’s share was $35 million.” Leissner tried to paint Ng as someone very close to Low, even placing Ng “at a star-studded 31st birthday party that Mr. Low arranged for himself in Las Vegas in 2012, although Mr. Ng was not on the guest list.”
But here’s problem No. 1 with this testimony, Ng always worked for and under Leissner during the 1MDB scandal and not the other way round. Leissner admitted under cross that “he — not Mr. Ng — oversaw the payment of most of the bribe money.” As Roiphe later told Goldman, “In a case like this, you hope to avoid a situation where you have a cooperator testifying against someone who is a subordinate.”
Then there is problem No. 2 for the prosecution, which is the government’s claim that Ng received some $35 million in ill-gotten gains from the 1MDB scandal. Ng’s lawyers have responded that any money Ng received, was repayment of a debt one of Leissner’s wives owed Ng’s wife. The prosecution has to show Ng received this money.
As further reported by Bishop, the prosecution concluded its direct case with “An FBI agent on Tuesday outlined how kickbacks allegedly flowed from Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB to former Goldman Sachs managing director Roger Ng and others.” Bishop wrote the monies allegedly from Chan Leissner’s account, “to another shell company in the name of Ng’s mother-in-law, initially called Silken Waters but later changed to Victoria Square.” Then came another web of shell company transfers into entities controlled by some combination of Ng, his wife, Lim Hwee Bin, and Lim’s mother. Around $300,000 was spent on diamond jewelry, another $20,000 for an hourglass and over $200,000 for the purchase of Bristol Myers Squibb shares, according to the government.” Finally, there was another $3.15 million which went into yet another “account the government couldn’t identify.” Nothing in this adds up to $35 million.
Got all that. Does that money transfer convince you that Ng was the mastermind that Leissner and the government is trying to make him out to be? By putting one of the great liars of all time on the stand as their key witness with only this as the ‘documented’ evidence, the government is risking everything on Leissner’s testimony; that it will be believable and credible and will not taint the government’s case in one juror’s eyes so the government can garner a guilty verdict. Remember, it doesn’t take 12 to acquit, only one.
There is lots of other unbelievable things going on in the Ng trial, but I will save them for another day.
