An ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker accused of involvement in the multibillion-US dollar 1Malaysia Development Bhd (1MDB) scandal has agreed to be extradited from Malaysia to the US to face charges, his lawyers said yesterday.
Huge sums of public money were purportedly stolen from Malaysian state fund 1MDB and used to buy everything from yachts to art in a scheme that allegedly involved former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and contributed to his government’s election defeat.
Goldman’s role is under scrutiny as the Wall Street titan helped arrange US$6.5 billion in bonds for 1MDB.
Authorities in Malaysia and the US accuse former employees of charges ranging from bribery to stealing billions of US dollars, and investigators believe cash was laundered through the US financial system.
Former Goldman Sachs managing director Ng Chong Hwa (吳崇華), commonly known as Roger Ng, was indicted in November last year when US authorities also lodged an extradition request. He has been in custody in Malaysia since the US indictment.
Malaysia also filed charges against Ng, as well as Goldman Sachs and another of its former employees, Tim Leissner.
At a court hearing in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, Ng’s lawyers said he would stop fighting the extradition request and wanted to be sent to the US within 30 days.
“He intends to defend the case on its merits in the court for the Eastern District of New York,” his lawyer Tan Hock Chuan (陳福泉) told reporters after the hearing.
“The respondent has reached an agreement with the US Department of Justice for bail,” he added, without giving further details.
The Malaysian Ministry of Home Affairs must first issue an order allowing Ng to be extradited to the US, the judge told the court. Under local law, Malaysia has up to 90 days to send him to the US, Tan said.
It was not immediately clear what would happen with the Malaysian charges.
Ng faces charges in the US of conspiracy to commit bribery and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
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