Goldman Sachs Group Inc CEO David Solomon’s voice mail to Goldman Sachs employees that “This isn’t us” to distance the mega bank from the multi-billion 1MDB scandal is too late, too little and too paltry, when in July 2016 and later in June 2017 in its expanded and updated kleptocratic litigation to forfeit 1MDB-linked assets in the United States, US Department of Justice (DoJ) had listed the “material misrepresentations and omitted facts” of the three 1MDB bonds arranged by Goldman Sachs in 2012 and 2013 and the almost-instant misappropriation and fraudulent diversion of some 40 per cent each of the three bonds.

The guilty plea of Goldman Sach’s former top banker in Asia, Tim Leissner, to two counts of conspiracy to launder money and conspiracy to violate the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act in relation to the 1MDB scandal has undermined the mega bank’s attempt to wash its hands of responsibility for the 1MDB scandal.

In his guilty plea in a New York district court on August 28, which was unsealed on November 8, Leissner said others at the bank helped him conceal bribes used to retain business in Malaysia.

He said the culture of secrecy at the investment bank led him to conceal wrongdoing from the company’s compliance staff. Read the rest of this entry »