Malaysian prosecutors have pressed criminal charges against 17 current and former directors of three subsidiaries of the Goldman Sachs investment bank: Goldman Sachs International, Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC and Goldman Sachs (Singapore) Pte in connection with Malaysian state fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad.

The charges are in accordance with s367(1) Capital Markets and Services Act 2007, read together with s179.

On 17th and 19th December 2018, criminal charges (invoking s179) were lodged against these three Goldman subsidiaries and their key employees Tim Leissner and Roger Ng, together with Jasmine Loo Ai Swan of 1MDB and Low Taek Jho, for perpetrating a scheme to defraud the Government of Malaysia and purchasers of three bonds with a face value of US$6.5  billion which were underwritten and arranged by Goldman Sachs, and issued by subsidiaries of 1MDB, by way of the commission and abetment of false or misleading statements to misappropriate billions from the bond proceeds dishonestly.

Section 367(1) states that “any person who...was a director, a chief  executive, an officer or a representative of a body corporate or was purporting to act in such capacity” at the time of its commission of an offence under that Act is deemed to have committed that offence unless that person can prove that (i) the offence was committed without his consent or connivance and (ii) that he exercised all such diligence to prevent the commission of the offence as he ought to have exercised, having regard to his capacity in the body corporate.

Section 367 is a codification by Parliament and a recognition of the fundamental principle of common law that a company can only act through its directing and controlling human agents, who may be criminally liable for unlawful or illegal acts of that company in which they participated or ought to have detected.

The names for Goldman Sachs International are: Richard John Gnodde; Brian Griffiths; Michael Sydney; Robin Antony Vinces; Claes Ake Gustaf Dahlback. The names for Goldman Sachs (Asia) LLC are: Oliver Robert Morgan Bolitho; Matthew Thayer Freemont-Smith; Frederick Towfigh; Archie William Parnell; Ronald Suk Bae Lee; Richard Mark Campbell-Breeden; Keith Leslie Hayes; Amol Sagun Naik; John Michael Evans; and Dimitrios Kavvathas. The names for Goldman Sachs (Singapore) Pte are: Goh Boon Leng; and Liow Chang Lee.