1MDB Trial Will Take a Break So the Defense Can Study New Documents

The bribery and money-laundering trial of a former Goldman Sachs executive was thrown into turmoil after federal prosecutors — for the second time in a little over a week — said the government had failed to promptly turn over thousands of pages of emails and other personal documents belonging to a key witness for the prosecution.

The federal judge presiding over the trial of Roger Ng in Brooklyn said Wednesday that the government’s failure to produce documents was “particularly troubling” and would result in a delay in the proceedings so that defense lawyers had time to review the additional materials.

“I am going to give the defense as much time as they need,” said Judge Margo K. Brodie, the chief judge for the Eastern District of New York, during a brief hearing with the jury.

She made her decision after Marc Agnifilo, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, said he was considering asking the judge to declare a mistrial. He added that he might ask for the charges against his client to be dismissed because of what he called “government misconduct.”

Judge Brodie offered no insight on how she might rule on those requests. But a mistrial would be a shocking development in the case, 16 months after Goldman pleaded guilty to a criminal charge and paid $5 billion in fines for its role in a far-reaching foreign corruption and bribery scheme involving a big Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

Mr. Ng, who was a banker for Goldman in Malaysia, is likely to be the only person to stand trial in the United States over the scandal, since the mastermind of the scheme — Jho Low — is a fugitive and believed to be living in China.

In a letter filed with the court late Tuesday, federal prosecutors said they had just become aware that about 15,000 emails and other documents belonging to the government’s star witness, Timothy Leissner, were never turned over to the defense. They added that the belated discovery of those documents was an “inexcusable error” and that they were open to a delay in the trial, which began on Feb. 14.

Prosecutors blamed the problem on another team of government lawyers tasked with reviewing the documents to make sure they could be provided to defense lawyers without violating any of Mr. Leissner’s rights. A similar issue arose after the trial started when the government belatedly turned over 120,000 pages of emails and other documents belonging to Mr. Leissner, a former Goldman partner.

“We are still going over the 120,000 pages we got,” Mr. Agnifilo said. “This is a categorical failure.”

The break is likely to last for several days after Mr. Leissner wraps up his direct testimony. He agreed to cooperate with the government and pleaded guilty in 2018 for his part in the brazen scheme to loot more than $4 billion from Malaysia’s 1MDB fund. He also agreed to forfeit about $47 million in ill-gotten gains and is expected to be sentenced this summer.

Starting last week, Mr. Leissner has been walking the jury through the details of the scheme. He testified that he and Mr. Ng had been integral players in the plot to use some of the looted money to pay bribes to foreign officials so that Goldman would secure the rights to arrange $6.5 million in bonds for the 1MDB fund.

He testified that both he and Mr. Ng were at a 2012 meeting where Mr. Low described the plan to pay bribes. Mr. Leissner said Mr. Low, a flamboyant Malaysian businessman with a penchant for high living, had told the former Goldman executives that they would be “taken care of.”

Mr. Leissner also testified that he had used $10 million of the looted 1MDB money to buy a house for a former girlfriend. He said he had bought the house to stop the girlfriend from alerting the authorities to his activities.

Prosecutors have claimed that Mr. Ng and his wife got up to $35 million in illicit proceeds from the scheme. But Mr. Agnifilo has said the money came from legitimate unrelated transactions. He said the $35 million had been owed to Mr. Ng’s wife by Mr. Leissner’s former wife, Judy Chan, who owns a large vineyard in China.

Mr. Agnifilo said the documents that the government had been slow in producing could be critical to his client’s defense. He said Covid-19 restrictions had limited his ability to pursue investigative leads in Asia.