Goldman Sachs charged over Malaysian development fund fraud

Representational Image

Malaysia filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs and two former executives on Monday for their role in the alleged multibillion-dollar ransacking of state investment fund, called 1MDB.

Attorney General Tommy Thomas said the government is seeking several billion dollars in fines from Goldman Sachs for breaches of securities laws that involved it making false and misleading statements to investors. He said his office will seek prison sentences of up to 10 years for the former Goldman executives, Roger Ng Chong Hwa and Tim Leissner.

Malaysian and US prosecutors allege that bond sales organized by Goldman Sachs for 1MDB provided one of the means for associates of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak to steal billions over several years from a fund that was ostensibly set up to accelerate Malaysia's economic development. Goldman Sachs denied any wrongdoing in response to the charges. Thomas said $2.7 billion was stolen from three bond sales organized by subsidiaries of Goldman Sachs. The bank, he said, received $600 million in fees for organizing the bond deals.

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever