Goldman Sachs Hired Prostitutes To Help Close Business Deal, Color Me Unsurprised

WJ Cope9 years ago

Goldman Sachs might be in some very hot water for allegedly hiring prostitutes as part of an offer to a Libyan wealth fund. Apparently, GS funded prostitutes, travel, and extravagant hotels in an attempt to close the deal with Libyan business LIA.

From The Guardian:

The accusations were made at the hearing for a claim of $1.2bn (£846m) from the Wall Street bank by the fund set up under the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

Roger Masefield, a QC for LIA, set out the background to nine trades that Goldman Sachs executed for the Libyan sovereign wealth fund between January and April 2008. When the losses emerged, Masefield said one Libyan official described Goldman as the “bank of mafiosa”.

The “bank of mafiosa.” That’s gangster right there. If I were in Goldman Sachs’ top brass, I would be smirking right now. They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity, and this might actually turn out to be not that big of a deal for GS. It literally sounds like something out of The Wolf of Wall Street.

It looks like there’s a bit more to this story than the Goldman Sachs wrongdoing, however. It turns out that LIA might be a sham in and of itself.

In documents provided to the court by the LIA cited Goldman Sachs describing the sovereign wealth fund as having “zero-level” financial sophistication and one individual having “delivered a pitch on structured leveraged loans to someone who lives in the middle of the desert with his camels”.

You can see why GS would try to appeal to this company with strippers and improper benefits. That’s what you do to appeal to a bunch of crooks..

[via The Guardian]

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