Mystery Goldman Exec at 1MDB Meeting Signals New Woes for Bank

[jpak]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-02/mystery-goldman-exec-at-1mdb-meeting-signals-new-woes-for-bank

When Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak visited New York in September 2013, a senior Goldman Sachs Group Inc. official went out to greet him.

At the time, that would have seemed fitting: Malaysia had been good to Goldman Sachs. Three bond offerings from the country’s 1MDB wealth fund, controlled by Najib, had already generated about $600 million in fees for the bank. But now, previously unreported details of that gathering at the Time Warner Center overlooking Manhattan’s Central Park could prove damaging for Goldman Sachs.

A federal filing unsealed on Thursday places Najib and a “high-ranking executive” from the bank in a meeting with several people the U.S. now accuses of a massive global fraud -- including a Malaysian financier who had been repeatedly flagged by the bank’s compliance teams.

Attendees included the Goldman Sachs banker who’d arranged the bond offerings, Tim Leissner, who’s now admitted to U.S. authorities that he conspired to bribe officials to get the deals done and accepted some $200 million of the proceeds into accounts he controlled. Also present was Low Taek Jho, the Malaysian financier known as Jho Low who the U.S. accuses of masterminding the scheme to divert billions of dollars from 1MDB to private accounts, fine art, luxury toys and high-end real estate.

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[hatrack]

1. Goldman Sachs involved in "massive global fraud"?

No!

[Achilleaze]

2. Shocking: That the republicans embedded corrupt GS goons in the Administration

"After running a campaign in which he lambasted the “corrupt” ties between Wall Street and Washington, President Trump has handed the job of shaping economic policy over to Wall Street insiders generally, and to alumni of Goldman Sachs in particular.

"In choosing Gary Cohn as National Economic Council Director and Steve Mnuchin as Treasury Secretary, along with Jay Clayton at the Securities and Exchange Commission, Trump has turned to Wall Street veterans with deep knowledge of the financial crisis—knowledge gained as champions of the dangerous practices that helped cause it.

"In areas ranging from financial regulations, to taxes, to infrastructure, to trade, this Goldman-heavy Administration is promoting policies that would boost Goldman Sachs’s profits, in many ways, at the expense of taxpayers and the broader public. Goldman’s stock price has already soared..."

https://inequality.org/research/government-sachs-trump-administration/