Although the bank knew Mr. Leissner was at the center of the investigation, the breadth of the charges appeared to have caught Goldman off guard. The bank was not expecting a leader of its Asian investment bank to be implicated as well. Goldman on Thursday suspended Mr. Vella, according to a person with direct knowledge but was not authorized to speak publicly.

Goldman has repeatedly played down its role in the 1MDB scandal, saying it was unaware of how money from the fund was being used. The company said in a statement that it was cooperating with the investigation.

Goldman’s chairman, Lloyd Blankfein, sought to frame the matter as the misdeeds of rogue employees.

“These are guys who evaded our safeguards, and lie, stuff like that’s going to happen,” Mr. Blankfein said on the sidelines of The New York Times DealBook conference on Thursday. “Somebody’s going to use phones away from us, and personal this and personal that,” he said, referring to personal devices.

Federal prosecutors have depicted Mr. Low as the mastermind of the scheme to loot the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund. During one exchange with Mr. Leissner, Mr. Low advised of the need to “suck up to” 1MDB officials, including sending “cakes” — that is to say, bribes, according to government filings.

Court filings unsealed on Thursday showed that federal prosecutors have built out their case since they first filed charges against Mr. Leissner in June. Back then, the charges did not contain any reference to the co-conspirator identified by people familiar with the matter as Mr. Vella. But the court documents associated with Mr. Leissner’s plea on Aug. 28 do.

According to that filing, the co-conspirator identified separately as Mr. Vella agreed with Mr. Leissner and Mr. Ng, in a 2012 meeting, to keep Goldman’s compliance department in the dark about the scheme to bribe government officials to secure financing for a deal.

“This looks pretty terrible and a far cry from post-financial crisis settlements,” said Alex Turnbull, the son of the former Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and a former Goldman Sachs employee in Singapore who raised concerns about how Goldman valued the bond deals in 2012.