The Federal Reserve Board of the United States has permanently barred Andrea Vella, a senior executive at Goldman Sachs, from the banking industry for his part in Goldman's financing of 1Malaysia Development Berhad, the defrauded Malaysian sovereign wealth fund.

Goldman arranged bond offerings in 2012 and 2013 for 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB), Malaysia's state-owned development and investment company. The Federal Reserve's consent order states that Vella failed to tell his superiors about Low Taek Jho's involvement in the bond offerings. Low, who is a fugitive, was a person of known concern to Goldman and his involvement engendered obvious underwriting risks. The flamboyant Malaysian financier is at the epicentre of all 1MDB probes.

It reads: "Vella was responsible for providing full and accurate information to the Firm committees reviewing the complex financing transactions and appropriately supervising financing personnel working on the transactions...Vella engaged in unsafe and unsound practices by failing to ensure that the involvement of third-party Low Taek Jho in the 1MDB offerings, which indicated heightened potential underwriting risks, was fully escalated within the firm." The Fed has declined to levy a fine on Vella.

In September the case of Plaut v Goldman Sachs Group Inc began in the US District Court in the Southern District of New York (Manhattan) and threw further light on the saga. This class action lawsuit, controlled by a Swedish pension fund and backed by Goldman's own shareholders, alleges in Paragraph 15 that Andrea Vella, who is Italian, was totally complicit in a criminal plot to steal money and bribe officials.

The US Department of Justice has charged Low and two former Goldman employees, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng, with criminally participating in a scheme to divert proceeds of the bond offerings from 1MDB for their personal benefit and bribing certain government officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi.

In March 2019, the Fed permanently prohibited Leissner from banking and fined him $1.42 million for his part in the scheme to divert bond proceeds. Ng is prohibited from banking by the board.