KUALA LUMPUR, March 29 — The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority has fined US investment bank Goldman Sachs’ London unit £34 million (RM182 million) for misreporting hundreds of millions in transactions.
According to the Financial Times, the FCA adjudged Goldman Sachs to have improperly reported over 213 million individual transactions between 2007 and 2017.
Goldman had cooperated with the investigation and agreed to a settlement of the fines.
The settlement carved 30 per cent off the original fine of £49 million.
“We are pleased to have resolved this legacy matter. We dealt with the issues proactively at the time and have made significant investments across the period to develop and enhance our reporting procedures,” the bank said in a statement.
Goldman Sachs is at the centre of the global corruption scandal surrounding Malaysian state investor 1MDB.
The US Justice Department (DoJ) has already secured convictions against former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner on charges of conspiracy of money laundering and conspiracy stemming from the bank’s bond issuance on behalf of 1MDB.
The DoJ is also awaiting the extradition of another former Goldman Sachs banker, Malaysian Roger Ng, to stand trial in the US on related charges.
Goldman Sachs is accused of aiding fugitive financier Low Taek Jho in defrauding 1MDB during the issuance of over US$6 billion in bonds.
The Malaysian government is seeking to at least recover the “above average” fees the US bank charged for the bond issues in addition to other losses.
Goldman Sachs is also facing billions in potential fines in the US over the episode.
The scandal that implicated former Goldman Sachs chair Lloyd Blankfein has wiped out billions of the bank’s capitalisation.
Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon previously apologised for his bank’s role in the scandal while simultaneously trying to present its involvement as limited to rogue operatives such as Leissner and Ng.
