Goldman Sachs hired prostitutes to win Libyan business, court told
Wall Street Bank disputes allegations by Libyan sovereign wealth fund that it paid for the women, as well as private jets and five-star hotels
The Guardian
By Jill Teaner
13 June 2016
Goldman Sachs bankers paid for prostitutes, private jets and five-star hotels and held business meetings on yachts to win business from a Libyan investment fund set up under Gaddafi regime, the high court in London was told yesterday.
The allegations came at the start of a legal claim by the Libyan Investment Authority for $1.2bn (£846m) from the investment bank. Lawyers for the LIA are claiming for losses on nine trades that Goldman Sachs executed for the fund between January and April 2008.
The LIA lost almost all its investment through the trades – one of which was the largest that the bank had undertaken in a single stock – while Goldman Sachs generated “eyewatering” profits of over more than $200m from the trades, Roger Masefield, a QC for LIA, said.
The LIA, Masefield told the court, felt betrayed as the trades generated excessive profits for Goldman and were unsuitable for the LIA, which was staffed by individuals who had not been appointed on merit.
Once the losses emerged, Masefield said one Libyan official described Goldman as the “bank of mafiosa”.
The LIA was set up in 2006 to invest the country’s oil wealth as its status from a pariah state was being lifted. Masefield said it was a nascent sovereign wealth fund with limited abilities to understand the so-called jumbo and elephant trades.
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Now watch the job applications flood in from Congress.
ReplyDeleteOnly if they're teenage rent boys.
DeleteThe Lords and Parliament will want them on expenses next.
DeleteThe Lords and Parliament will want them on expenses next.
Delete