Goldman wins exemption from Labor Department’s pension overseer
The Employee Benefits Security Administration gives the firm a green light to oversee retirement plan assets despite its 1MDB misdeeds
The Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration has granted Goldman Sachs a five-year exemption, allowing it to continue overseeing retirement plan assets as a qualified professional asset manager despite the firm’s violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
In that case, which Goldman settled for $2.9 billion last October, the bank’s Malaysian subsidiary admitted that it had paid more than $1 billion in bribes to win work raising money for the Malaysian state-owned wealth fund, 1MDB. In all, Goldman agreed to pay about $5 billion in penalties to regulators around the world, including the largest monetary penalty ever assessed under U.S. corporate criminal bribery law.
“This exemption provides only the relief specified in the text of the exemption, and only with respect to the criminal convictions or criminal conduct described herein,” EBSA said in a notice in the Federal Register. “It provides no relief from violations of any law other the prohibited transaction provisions of ERISA and the Code.”
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