>The money was used to buy a Picasso painting, diamond necklaces and Birkin bags as well as to pay for the Hollywood blockbuster “The Wolf of Wall Street.”<p>A scam that funded a movie about scams? True life is stranger than fiction.
Well, at least they didn't start another famine[1]... <i>this</i> time.<p>Question: How does Goldman Sachs <i>still</i> get away with this stuff? Due to their lengthy rap sheet, <i>multiple</i> governments and every law enforcement agency in the world <i>should</i> be watching their every action. It's a safe bet they're going to do something illegal again... and again... and again. Why aren't they being caught in the act and stopped before they can waltz off with the profits? Why haven't they been shut down or barred from doing business in the jurisdictions they've screwed over? Malaysia is going after Goldman Sachs for reparations, but have they kicked the company out of Malaysia?<p>[1]<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-how-goldman-gambled-on-starvation-2016088.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-har...</a>
I've heard that subsidiaries of the big accounting firms are essentially separate companies and really just share the firms name, I'm not sure if that's true or not but in the case of the main Wall Street firms, its most definitely is not.<p>Goldman is Goldman everywhere which makes this more concerning.<p>Even more troubling are reports that the new GS CEO, David Solomon, reviewed multiple of the 1MDB deals. To be fair its not clear if he personally reviewed them or they were just a meeting note in a senior partners meeting.<p>Going in GS favour is that they fired Leissner, the GS point man, when the allegations originally came out in 2016 and they self reported the incident, though its not clear if they reported it before the original incident was first reported on.<p>I'd imagine since GS is blaming the bankers ability to circumvent internal controls to catch bribes and kick backs, that things are about to get even more bureaucratic over there.<p><i></i>Speculation<i></i>
Also watch for any indication of events that can tie this to the Euro zone. I have a feeling regulators in Europe would love to lay a large fine on a US bank, given how many fines European banks have paid in the US recently:)<p>A research note I just saw, estimated this could cost GS more than $1B in fines in the US alone.
1) Send a staff member from the target country to grease the wheels of the local government officials<p>2) If that doesn't work, bribe them outright<p>3) Take a piece of the gargantuan bond issue contract, do whatever it takes to get people to buy those pieces of paper, including cooking the books<p>4) Collect year-end bonus and absolve yourself of all responsibility after the deal is done.<p>It's the same playbook every time. Greece in 1999, Libya in the post-Gaddafi era, and now Malaysia. Probably many others that I'm not even aware of.
I somehow hadn’t heard about this one, but seriously, this is just... I have no words.<p>But the part that has completely blown my mind, ... Jho Lo is a <i>fugitive</i>!<p>Federal law enforcement in this country has become a total laughing stock. High profile arrests/pleas for process crimes and 7-day sentences after multi-million dollar investigations, and then this.<p>Where was Treasury? Where was FinCEN? Where were the Feds?<p>To say nothing of the apparently hundreds of people implicated in receiving stolen property. If you receive gifts worth millions of dollars which was stolen money, I mean are they even trying to claw back any of these millions from the “stars” he lavished?<p>To say nothing of the investors who actually bought the bonds of the now bankrupt fund?<p>“A billion here, a billion there, eventually you’re talking about real money.”<p>This guy is a financial terrorist. If you can’t extradite him, legally designate him an enemy combatant and take him out with a Hellfire.
I found this link that lists all the fines Goldman has paid since 2000, which is $9.6B.<p><a href="https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/goldman-sachs" rel="nofollow">https://violationtracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/goldman-sa...</a><p>Is that just a Cost of Doing Business to them?
There wasn't a year after the global financial crisis which started in 2007 when one or more major banks were not involved in some major scandals, even after all the bailouts and "we'll behave from now on promises": Libor fixing, FX fixing, HSBC money laundering, UBS helping rich clients evade taxes, and so on.<p>I can't think of any other industry where year after year the same 4 or 5 actors are involved in major scandals, yet not one single senior executive goes to jail.<p>As the US general attorney put it, they really are "too big to jail", and they behave accordingly.
More background:
<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/how-malaysia-s-1mdb-scandal-shook-the-financial-world-quicktake" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/how-malay...</a><p>How he spent the money:
<a href="https://thecoverage.my/news/jho-low-threw-wildest-billion-dollar-party-vegas-history-armed-infinite-supply-cash-wildest-party-vegas-ever-saw/" rel="nofollow">https://thecoverage.my/news/jho-low-threw-wildest-billion-do...</a>
I really dislike the title for this article. The way the NYTimes wrote it it's could be reasonable to assume that GS was just walking along one day and some really terrible fraud scandal jumped out and grabbed hold of it. It is worded to imply GS was related to the scandal but avoids implying they had anything to do with actually causing it.<p>Guilt and liability aren't the job of NYT to resolve but they phrased this very poorly.<p>(FYI, before down votes, I'm not anti-NYT and this isn't meant to be favoring either side of the political divide, it just seems like bad reporting)
There is a fascinating book [0] that recently came out that describes Jho Low in a great detail, including the role of GS and the ex-prime minister of Malaysia.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079WVJZCH/ref=oh_aui_d_detailpage_o00_?ie=UTF8&psc=1" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079WVJZCH/ref=oh_aui_d_de...</a>
>The lengthy court filings by prosecutors in Brooklyn paint an ugly picture for Goldman, which was instrumental in raising money for the fund, 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB.<p>Given the fund's affinity for Hollywood, I wonder if that abbreviation is meant to evoke "IMDB".
Well <i>of course they were</i>. What exactly made anyone think they'd actually changed anything, other than time and a bit of marketing? What they were doing at the time of the financial crisis was illegal then, and this is illegal now.<p>It turns out when the financial incentive is big enough, people will commit crimes! Especially when they're in an institution that seems to prize making money and "being clever" above following the law.
Reminds me of what Goldman Sachs did with Libya.<p><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-goldman-sachs-libya/" rel="nofollow">https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-goldman-sachs-libya/</a><p>Not long after Libya's response, you get regime change. I'm sure it was just coincidence
Funny how we say Goldman "is ensnarled in scandal" rather than "<i>perpetuated</i> a vast fraud".<p>Almost makes it sound as if the real news isn't their <i>reprehensible actions</i>, but the fact that they got caught! (Or even that the government is slowing them down with annoying charges).
"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,”<p>Of course, it is very convenient to get the money of corrupt deals made by top execs, and then later claim they didn't know anything about how they did it. What about returning all that money and putting them in jail, for a change?
>><i>“These are guys who evaded our safeguards, and lie, stuff like that’s going to happen,” Mr. Blankfein said</i><p>Safeguards written in stone, no doubt. In the article it said that they made $600 MILLION in a $6 Billion bond offering. I'm sure those that wrote the safeguards were thinking of them, not of the $600 MILLION profit in one shot.
Reminder that GS also helped the corrupt Greek government hide its debts in order to join the Euro. This is not an aberrant behavior for GS, just business as usual.<p>Many articles were written about this :<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-debt-crisis-goldman-sachs-could-be-sued-for-helping-country-hide-debts-when-it-joined-euro-10381926.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/greek-debt-c...</a>
Given that "Wolf of Wall Street" was written by the Wolf himself, it is not surprising that the trail of corruption goes back to Wall Street again. He was probably in friendly terms with the financiers of this movie.
For those that enjoy content in audio form check out the article on BingeWith: <a href="http://bingewith.com/#id1180" rel="nofollow">http://bingewith.com/#id1180</a>
The cynic in me think it's very bad press for capitalism. That kind of news is really gold for populists who are against capitalism.<p>And honestly, how could you really defend capitalism politically? Public opinion does not miss on that kind of thing.
<i>diamond necklaces and Birkin bags as well as to pay for the Hollywood blockbuster “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Najib Razak,</i><p>what an ironic movie choice