Reuters video interview on Ex-Goldman banker Robert Ng's trial Monday

       Excerpts:

       FORDHAM UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW ASSOCIATE CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF LAW, CHERYL BADER, SAYING:

       "So this is a scandal of huge proportions, and it's been going on for many years. So there's billions of dollars that were embezzled and misappropriated. There's bribery of high level officials in Malaysia and Goldman Sachs, which is obviously a very influential U.S. investment banking company, was lending its expertise and its reputation for this massive fraud. So, you know, this is really a pretty full dramatic case. And by the way, Goldman Sachs was also making record profits here. These bond offerings they were, they received fees to the tune of $600 million."

       "I think that Ng has an uphill battle because I think they are going to show that he was at a high level of management, that he had the connection with [ Malaysian intermediary Jho] Low, that he was very involved in everything that was happening, all the transactions that were happening with this fund. And I think it's going to be hard for him to, to separate himself. But but one, one piece of evidence that might be favorable to him is apparently, he warned officials at Goldman that Low should not be trusted. And I think he's going to harp on the fact that, you know, that he himself was trying to distance himself with any wrongdoing."

       "Robert Ng's defense is, 'I was just the fall guy here,' that, 'I introduced Mr. Low to my boss, but after that I had no connection with what was happening, that it was my boss, [Former Goldman Sachs Partner Timothy] Leissner, who was involved in the day to day operation of this fund.' And so part of it will be to see if the government can show that he was really intimately involved in the day to day operation here, that he knew about the bribery, that he knew about the misappropriation of funds and violations of security laws. And part of it will be to see how the prosecutor can connect the dots back to Mr. Ng.

       "Goldman itself doesn't face any criminal liability in this particular trial. They are referred to in the indictment not even by name, but as, 'the financial institution.' So Goldman subsidiary in Malaysia, actually took the guilty plea, which is very unusual because Goldman in the past has often resisted any criminal admission of guilt. But here they did find that they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar, and so they did take, the subsidiary did take a plea. But that is ancillary to this particular trial." - Reuters