In this October 26, 2015, file photo, Macau billionaire Ng Lap-seng, left, leaves federal court with his attorney Ben Brafman after he was released on bail in connection with an alleged UN bribery scheme in New York. Photo: AP

US says Macau billionaire Ng Lap-seng hoped UN bribery would cement his legacy

Published: 8:59am, 26 Jul 2017

Ng Lap-seng’s dream of “fame and more fortune” drove the Macau billionaire to bribe United Nations officials to win support for a multibillion-dollar conference centre he hoped to build, a US prosecutor said on Tuesday near the end of Ng’s criminal trial.

In her closing argument in the US District Court in Manhattan, Assistant US Attorney Janis Echenberg said Ng bypassed the rules of international diplomacy to try to construct the “Geneva of Asia,” and “cement his legacy.”

But a lawyer for Ng, Tai Park, accused prosecutors of spinning a “spider web of inferences and suppositions” to transform activity the defendant was asked to do by diplomats into crimes. “It is frankly outrageous,” he said.

Ng, 69, has pleaded not guilty to bribery and money laundering charges.

Prosecutors said he hoped the Macau centre would regularly host events for developing countries as well as fuel the expansion of his real estate empire through the nearby construction of luxury housing, hotels, a shopping mall, marinas and a heliport.

Macau real estate developer Ng Lap-seng is accused of bribing former United Nations General Assembly president John Ashe. Photo: Reuters

Ng is accused of paying more than US$1 million of bribes to Francis Lorenzo, a former deputy ambassador of the Dominican Republic to the UN, and the late John Ashe, a former UN General Assembly president, during a five-year scheme.

“The defendant cheated,” Echenberg said. “Having the United Nations be a central part of this project would bring tens of thousands of people to Macau, and the defendant himself could take credit for making Macau, as he called it, the ‘Geneva of Asia.’”

In this July 19 photo, suspended Dominican Republic diplomat Francis Lorenzo leaves Manhattan federal court in New York, after giving over a week's worth of testimony in the United Nations bribery trial of billionaire Ng Lap-seng. Photo: AP

Park countered that Ng wanted to work with the U.N through public-private partnerships, but was victimised by greedy diplomats.

“There is nothing wrong with what he did,” Park said. “You had a public-private partnership where the UN said, ‘Please send us money.’”

Closing arguments were expected to resume on Wednesday. The trial began on June 29.

Lorenzo pleaded guilty to bribery and money laundering and was the government’s main witness against Ng, testifying for more than a week under a cooperation agreement.

Echenberg told jurors the case was not about whether Lorenzo was “a good person,” but rather whether Ng bribed him.

Ashe, a former U.N. ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda, was also charged, but died accidentally at home in June 2016 after dropping a barbell on his neck.

Ng, who has sat on the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, has been free on US$50 million bail and allowed to live under 24-hour guard in a luxury Manhattan apartment.

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