In 2009, just four months after Najib Razak was elected Prime Minister of Malaysia, 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) was created. The wealth fund was established for development projects to better serve the people of Malaysia, but it ultimately became a slush fund for the country’s leaders and their associates.
Goldman Sachs, a Wall Street giant, admitted that their Malaysian unit paid USD 1 billion in bribes to foreign officials and misled investors to raise over USD 6.5 billion in bond sales, for which the bank earned USD 600 million in fees. Despite having protocols in place to prevent fraud and corruption, prosecutors found that employees at Goldman often overlooked or ignored obvious red flags.
Criminal charges revealed that Jho Low, a Malaysian financier, conspired with Goldman banker Tim Leissner in a deal where they, along with Prime Minister Najib Razak, laundered the 1MDB funds through U.S. banks. The money was then used to purchase lavish items, such as a mega-yacht in Bali, paintings by van Gogh and Monet, a boutique hotel in Beverly Hills, a share of the EMI music publishing portfolio, and to finance the movie “The Wolf of Wall Street.” In total, an estimated USD 4.5 billion was looted from 1MDB.
Goldman Sachs’ history has been filled with scandal. During the 2008 global financial crisis, the bank, nicknamed the “great vampire squid,” earned a reputation for its ruthlessness, which resulted in a USD 5 billion fine—after the bank received a USD 10 billion bailout from the government. This is the first time, however, that one of the bank’s foreign units has gone before a U.S. judge and admitted it was guilty of a crime.
Why Is It News?
In July 2020, Goldman Sachs settled with the Malaysian government, agreeing to pay fines that will total USD 3.9 billion in order to absolve the bank of all other criminal charges. The settlement includes USD 2.5 billion in a payment directly to the Malaysian government and another USD 1.4 billion from assets seized by governments around the world (meaning those funds won’t come directly from Goldman). In mid-October, 1MDB pled guilty and agreed to pay USD 2.9 billion to the United States and announced that Goldman will recoup or withhold USD 174 million in compensation awarded to bank executives. After each settlement, stock in Goldman Sachs went up.
Dennis M. Kelleher of Better Markets, a Wall Street watchdog, claims the settlement is “virtually meaningless” and that a more serious penalty would be the appointment of an independent monitor of the bank’s compliance procedures. He also suggests that a guilty plea by the bank itself would be more fitting, as opposed to one from its Malaysian subsidiary.
Then answer the questions below. In your initial response to the topic you have to answer all questions:
Do you think the punitive fines the courts are ordering Goldman Sachs to pay are sufficient to make up for the wrongdoing?
Do you think Goldman Sachs ought to be held more directly accountable for its role in the 1MDB corruption scandal?
This isn’t the first corruption scandal Goldman Sachs has been involved in. How do you think the bank should move forward in regaining public trust?
Reflection – the students also should include a paragraph in the initial response in their own words, using finance terminology, reflecting on specifically what they learned from the assignment and how they think they could apply what they learned in the workplace or in everyday life.
