GS Goldman Sachs Group Inc

By Yantoultra Ngui 

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia--A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. banker has agreed to be extradited to the U.S. from Malaysia to contest charges over one of the world's largest financial scandals, his lawyer said.

Malaysian citizen Roger Ng is accused of aiding his boss, Tim Leissner--then Goldman's head of Southeast Asia--in siphoning off billions of dollars from Malaysian state investment fund 1Malaysia Development Bhd., or 1MDB. Mr. Leissner pleaded guilty in the U.S. last year to conspiring to launder money and violate laws against bribery of foreign officials.

"As we have said all along, we are outraged that any employee of the firm would undertake the actions detailed in the government's charges," a Goldman spokesman said Friday.

In early November U.S. prosecutors indicted Mr. Ng and another Malaysian, the financier Jho Low-- alleged mastermind of the 1MDB fraud--on three counts of conspiring to violate foreign-antibribery laws and launder money. Mr. Ng, who is 51 years old, was later arrested at the request of U.S. authorities, and is in custody.

Mr. Ng has fought extradition, but in a routine session in a Kuala Lumpur court on Friday, his lawyer, Tan Hock Chuan, said his client had agreed to go to the U.S. to be tried in federal court in the Eastern District of New York.

Mr. Tan said it is up to Malaysia's attorney general to decide whether to allow the extradition or to try Mr. Ng first on the four criminal charges against him in Malaysia over his role in three bond sales underwritten and arranged by Goldman. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of omitting material information and publishing untrue statements. The sales raised $6.5 billion for 1MDB--much of which has gone missing.

The attorney general's office didn't respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Ng's legal team said that an agreement had been reached with the U.S. Justice Department on bail and other terms, and that Mr. Ng requested to be sent to the U.S. within 30 days. They declined to give more details. A Justice Department spokeswoman, Nicole Navas Oxman, said in an email that the department "generally does not comment on extradition-related matters until a defendant is in the U.S."

Speaking to reporters after the court session, Mr. Tan said that he wasn't sure why Mr. Ng had changed his mind. Legal experts had said from the outset that he had little chance of avoiding extradition.

The financial scandals at 1MDB, a fund created by then-Prime Minister Najib Razak in 2009 to boost the country's economy, have sparked investigations in a number of nations, including Switzerland and the U.S. Public anger over the scandals played a major role in Mr. Najib's stunning election defeat last year. Mr. Najib has consistently denied any wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty to all the 42 charges made against him in Malaysia related to 1MDB and a former 1MDB unit called SRC. Trial dates haven't been set.

Malaysia's new government is trying to recover billions of dollars of 1MDB-related losses. In December authorities there filed criminal charges against three Goldman Sachs units, but last month the finance minister said the country would consider dropping them if Goldman compensated it for the full amount raised.

Goldman said it would fight the allegations. It has blamed rogue employees, and has said it was misled by the Malaysian government and 1MDB about the use of proceeds from the transactions.

Write to Yantoultra Ngui at yantoultra.ngui@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 16, 2019 00:37 ET (05:37 GMT)

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