⁍ Goldman Sachs on Thursday agreed to pay nearly $3 billion to settle a probe into its role in Malaysia’s 1MDB corruption scandal.

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⁍ The settlement resolves a probe by U.S. authorities into the bank’s role in underwriting three bond offerings in 2012 and 2013.

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⁍ Under the terms, Goldman has been slapped with a $2.3 billion penalty and about $600 million in disgorgement of ill-gotten gains.

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– Goldman Sachs will pay $2.3 billion and forfeit $600 million in what the Justice Department says is the largest penalty ever levied on a US company for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. The settlement reflects the bank’s central role “in a massive global scheme to loot billions of dollars” from the Malaysian state fund 1MDB, Acting Head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division Brian Rabbitt tells Reuters. Prosecutors say between 2009 and 2014, Goldman paid more than $1.6 billion in bribes to foreign officials in Malaysia and Abu Dhabi to win the bond offerings that raised $6.5 billion for Malaysia’s government. The scandal dates to the government of former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, which set up the 1MDB fund in 2009. The Justice Department estimated $4.5 billion was misappropriated by high-level fund officials and their associates between 2009 and 2014 to pay for real estate, art, and other luxury items. In November 2018, the US Justice Department filed criminal charges against two former Goldman Sachs bankers tied to the scandal, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng. The guilty plea by the bank’s Malaysia subsidiary at a court hearing in Brooklyn was a major victory for prosecutors who rarely extract such concessions from corporate entities. Goldman’s shares were up 1% on the news, as investors anticipated that Thursday’s deal should allow CEO David Solomon to accelerate his plan to reshape Goldman as a more conventional bank. “Getting this overhang off the back of management and the company in general is a very big win,” says an analyst at Vining Sparks.