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Thursday, March 28, 2024

A Sex Scandal at Goldman Sachs Has Morphed into a Lawyer Scandal

Courtesy of Pam Martens

Protester Wears a Swamp Creature Costume Outside Goldman Sachs Headquarters, January 17, 2017

Protester Wears a Swamp Creature Costume Outside Goldman Sachs Headquarters, January 17, 2017

It’s starting to feel like Goldman Sachs has an insatiable appetite for scandal. Thanks to Matt Taibbi, Goldman is already known around the world as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” Most recently, Goldman jammed its blood funnel into the 1MDB sovereign wealth fund of Malaysia, resulting in a criminal indictment by the Malaysian government followed by a settlement with Malaysia for $3.9 billion. In October criminal charges were brought in the same matter by the U.S. Department of Justice against Goldman, resulting in another $2.9 billion in fines by U.S. and foreign regulators.

The heavily publicized 1MDB scandal has filled headlines for the past five years. The Justice Department just settled its 1MDB charges against Goldman four weeks ago. Now Goldman is already back in the tabloid headlines for handling a sexual harassment case so shoddily that it seems like the multi-national bank has some kind of psychological need to perpetually sabotage its reputation.

The roots of the latest scandal began in December 2017 when it was announced that a partner of the big Wall Street law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, Karen Seymour, would be moving to Goldman Sachs to become co-general counsel and partner. Seymour is currently the General Counsel at Goldman. Seymour recommended a former colleague at Sullivan & Cromwell, Darrell Cafasso, to become the Global Head of Litigation at Goldman and he was hired for the job.

Now Goldman, Seymour and Cafasso are being sued by Marla Crawford, a lawyer who worked for the law firm, Jones Day, for 22 years and as a lawyer for Goldman for the past decade. Crawford held the position of Associate General Counsel at Goldman prior to her termination. Crawford’s lawsuit indicates that she had received “exemplary” performance reviews and was terminated for speaking up against the sexual harassment conduct of Cafasso toward one of Crawford’s younger colleagues. According to the lawsuit, this is what went down:

“Mr. Cafasso, as Global Head of Litigation, is in a position of substantial power, and he used that position to romantically prey upon a much younger and vulnerable female colleague (referred to anonymously herein as ‘Jane Doe’) who worked in his group and reported to him. Mr. Cafasso knew this Jane Doe would be susceptible to his advances and targeted her for that reason – Jane Doe knew her performance needed improvement, she was dealing with difficult personal matters outside of work, and Mr. Cafasso would exacerbate these matters through encouraging her to drink alcohol during private offsite meetings….”


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