KUALA LUMPUR, Feb 28 — Former Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker and convicted 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) conspirator Roger Ng is requesting no additional jail term in the United States after spending six months in Sungai Buloh prison.
Ng said he was imprisoned in a dirty Malaysian prison where he was sometimes chained to as many as 20 other inmates, Free Malaysia Today (FMT) reported.
Ng describe his experience in the Malaysian prison via a letter to the US district judge Margo Brodie, pleading for leniency when he is sentenced next week for his role in the looting of 1MDB funds.
In the letter on Saturday, he argued that the time he spent in Sungai Buloh prison before his May 2019 extradition to the US was “absolute hell” and punishment enough for his crimes.
He is asking Brodie to give him no additional jail time in the US when she sentences him on March 9 in the federal court in Brooklyn, New York.
Ng, 51, is the only Goldman employee to have gone to trial over the 1MDB scandal.
In Sungai Buloh, the one-time managing director said he lived with rats and other vermin, slept on a cement floor and contracted malaria and leptospirosis, a bacterial infection spread through contact with rat urine.
When he was taken to court, he said, he was handcuffed with 20 other prisoners in a “chain” and loaded into a crowded truck.
Ng said that he was held in solitary confinement for up to two weeks at a time.
“Six months in the Malaysian prison had a devastating effect mentally and physically.
“Until today, I find myself reclusive socially as I continue to deal with this brutal and distressing experience. The time without sunlight and in isolation made me lose my mind and become frightful,” he was quoted as saying.
Ng was convicted by a federal jury in April of three felony counts, including conspiring to violate US anti-bribery laws and conspiring to launder money.
Tim Leissner, Ng’s former Goldman boss, pleaded guilty and was the government’s star witness in the trial. Leissner will be sentenced in September.
Goldman paid more than US$2.3 billion in the plea deal, the largest penalty in US history for a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
