1MDB scandal: how Goldman Sachs’s Hong Kong deal maker Andrea Vella turned into mystery man

Charismatic banker Andrea Vella, who bears a resemblance to George Clooney, has already skirted scandals in Greece and Libya

He is currently on leave after US prosecutors dragged him into the scandal, but he has not been charged

5-MIN READ5-MIN

Published: 8:07pm, 16 Aug 2019Updated: 8:09pm, 16 Aug 2019

Andrea Vella was Goldman Sachs’s top deal maker in Hong Kong. He had a nose for splashy trades, a fondness for the Bentley Continental, and a vague enough resemblance to George Clooney that there was even a joke among some bankers: “What would George do?”

That was almost a year ago. Then US prosecutors dragged him into one of the biggest Wall Street scandals in a generation. Without charging him, they filed court documents tying Vella to the conspiracy that looted billions of dollars from the Malaysian investment fund known as 1MDB. The bank promptly put him on leave.

Now as the US weighs how to handle Goldman Sachs, Vella is the mystery man to watch. If someone so powerful is found to have helped fuel the fiasco, it will be much harder for the bank to contain it by pinning blame on a rogue partner, Tim Leissner.

During confidential talks, the bank has been at odds with prosecutors over their description of Vella’s role in key moments of the 1MDB deals, according to people familiar with the discussions. Authorities have said that he dealt with the scandal’s alleged mastermind, Jho Low, and was aware of plans to bribe officials – a narrative Goldman has been disputing.

There’s another reason Vella’s involvement strikes a nerve. He helped structure 1MDB’s fundraising, and after money went missing played a central role in Goldman’s initial review of what went wrong, one of the people said. When US prosecutors in Brooklyn described his involvement in court filings last year, without naming him, it alarmed some members of Goldman’s board, who worried the claims might further taint the firm’s senior leadership, two people said.