As highlighted here, Roger Ng (a former managing director at Goldman Sachs) was recently convicted by a jury of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and related offenses for paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials in connection with 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia’s state-owned and state-controlled investment development company.
As discussed here, in September 2021 Judge Margo Brodie (E.D.N.Y) denied Ng’s pre-trial motion to dismiss. Among the arguments Ng made in the motion to dismiss was that a count in the indictment should be dismissed because the DOJ failed to that Ng conspired to circumvent a set of internal accounting controls cognizable under the FCPA. As to this issue, Judge Brodie concluded that the FCPA’s internal controls provisions can be implicated even in transactions in which an issuer does not use its own assets to pay an alleged bribe.
During the trial, at the conclusion of the government’s case, Ng moved for a judgment of acquittal of the charge and Judge Brodie denied the motion on the record on March 28, 2022. Recently, Judge Brodie issued this Memorandum and Order explaining her decision.
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