Ng Lap Seng | Bail rules no closed door massages

A judge tightened security Monday at the luxury Manhattan apartment where a Chinese billionaire convicted of bribing United Nations diplomats will likely reside under 24-hour guard until sentencing. The move is a precaution fought for by prosecutors who suspect Ng Lap Seng may try to flee the country before he is sentenced.

Defense attorney Andrew Genser, who argued on Ng’s behalf, said his client has faith in the U.S. judicial system and had no plans to flee. “He hasn’t been sitting around trying to plot some escape plan,” Genser said. “He’s been plotting his appeal.”

U.S. District Judge Vernon S. Broderick rejected a request by prosecutors to immediately imprison 69-year-
old Ng Lap Seng after his conviction over a week ago on bribery and money laundering charges. The charges carry a potential prison term lasting decades, though his actual sentence would be far less.

“It is literally difficult to imagine a defendant with a greater incentive to flee,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal.

A jury convicted Ng of paying over USD1.7 million in bribes to two ambassadors from 2010 to 2015 to arrange support to construct a huge U.N. conference center in Macau, where he resides. No sentencing date has been set.

At Monday’s hearing, Broderick seemed surprised to learn that Ng was receiving massages every other day in his bedroom with the door closed and that the massage therapist remained at the apartment for four to 10 hours, cooking meals that were sometimes also served to Ng’s armed guards.

The judge put one of the guards from a private security company on the witness stand and learned that the guards used Ng’s visitors, mostly family, as interpreters and that the guards generally did not use a security wand to search familiar members of Ng’s family for metal objects when they entered the apartment.

Broderick ordered the guards to stop eating food cooked in Ng’s apartment, to use the wand to search all visitors for metal objects and to ensure the bedroom door remains open during massages while making periodic walk-through checks of the apartment.

He also ordered the guards to enable prosecutors or federal law enforcement to see video feeds of rooms within the apartment. And he limited visitors to family members with a requirement that a third guard be required if more than five adults were in the apartment. MDT/AP