KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 — Prosecutors in the US case against former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng Chong Hwa argued in court that his wife created a shell company and an accompanying bank account to help launder millions of dollars stolen from Malaysia’s sovereign investment bank 1MDB back in 2012.
Ng’s wife, Lim Hwee Bin, made arrangements to create the shell company just a day before the first of three bond deals were closed between the US investment bank and 1MDB in 2012, Bloomberg reported today, citing testimony by US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) special agent Sean Fern in the New York court.
Both Ng and Lim are Malaysians. The US news reports inverted Lim’s surname, listing it as Hwee Bin Lim as per Western custom.
According to the Bloomberg report, Lim “played a central and crucial role” in helping her husband launder money that was siphoned from the bond deals, through 1MDB, by fugitive Malaysian businessman Low Taek Jho — better known as Jho Low.
According to the report, illicit payments from Low found its way into Lim’s shell company named Victoria Square — it was previously called Silken Waters — which was opened with a bank account at UBS Group AG.
While Lim’s mother, Tan Kim Chin, was named the owner of Victoria Square, Fern told the US court that he had traced emails showing that bankers communicated with Lim regarding the company and its UBS bank account.
Ng is being accused of working together with his former boss at Goldman, Tim Leissner, in helping Low loot 1MDB money.
Leissner, a former partner for Goldman Sachs in Asia, pled guilty in 2018 to a conspiracy to launder money and has the US prosecution’s star witness in Ng’s trial.
US prosecutors reportedly said that the first bond transaction called “Project Magnolia” was worth US$1.75 billion (approximately RM7.37 billion now), and alleged that Low and his associates had siphoned out at least US$500 million (approximately RM2.1 billion now) using a shell entity they created called Aabar PJS Limited in the British Virgin Islands.
Leissner reportedly testified to receiving more than US$60 million (US2.52 million now) from Low, into accounts controlled by his then-wife Judy Chan Leissner.
Leissner then reportedly said that he used Chan’s accounts to send Ng US$35.1 million through Victoria Square.
But Ng’s defence has argued that the money sent from Chan to Lim was due to an unrelated business transaction.
The defence lawyers said they intend to call Lim to testify for her husband.
