1MDB: ex-Goldman banker Roger Ng claims 6 months in ‘brutal’ Malaysia prison ‘made me lose my mind’

The ex-Goldman Sachs banker is pleading for leniency when he’s sentenced next week for his role in the looting of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund

Ng said he lived with vermin in the ‘absolute hell’ of Sungai Buloh prison, had to sleep on a cement floor and contracted malaria and leptospirosis

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Roger Ng arrives at a court in New York last year for his trial. The ex-Goldman Sachs banker claims his “brutal and distressing experience” in a Malaysian prison made him “reclusive socially”. Photo: Reuters

Published: 11:31am, 28 Feb 2023Updated: 2:19pm, 28 Feb 2023

Former Goldman Sachs banker and convicted 1MDB conspirator Roger Ng said in a court filing that he spent six months in a squalid Malaysian prison where he was sometimes chained to as many as 20 other inmates.

Ng described his previous incarceration in a letter to US District Judge Margo Brodie pleading for leniency when he is sentenced next week for his role in the looting of Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB.

In the Saturday letter, Ng argued that the time he spent in Malaysia’s Sungai Buloh prison before his May 2019 extradition to the US was “absolute hell” and punishment enough for his crimes.

Ng is asking Brodie to give him no additional jail time in the US when she sentences him on March 9 in federal court in Brooklyn, New York.

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

Roger Ng

Ng, 51, is the only Goldman employee to have gone to trial over the 1MDB scandal.