$60 Billion Sovereign Wealth Fund Screwed By Goldman Sachs

Posted on October 8, 2014 by RonMamita — 1 Comment

“Get Out Of My Country” Libyan Sovereign Wealth Fund “Screwed” By Goldman

Via: ZeroHedge.com 07 Oct 2014
You can mess with Greece with only modest repercussions, but, as Bloomberg reports, mess with Libya and trouble comes fast. In a strangely familiar case of deja vu, Libya’s sovereign wealth fund (LIA) sued Goldman Sachs over money-losing investments made in 2008, saying the bank exploited the LIA’s inexperience to sell risky derivatives. An LIA executive cursed at the Goldman bankers that they had “screwed” him and threatened “get out of my country,” according to witness statements, adding that “he would come after their families.”

As Bloomberg reports,

The $60 billion Libya Investment Authority fund, established under former Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi, grew to be Africa’s second-largest sovereign wealth fund by the time he was deposed and killed in 2011. Some of the firm’s investments proved disastrous, leading to attempts to restructure deals, regulatory investigations and multi-billion dollar lawsuits.

Libya’s sovereign wealth fund sued Goldman Sachs over money-losing investments made in 2008, saying the bank exploited the LIA’s inexperience to sell risky derivatives. The case is the largest of dozens of U.K. lawsuits against multiple lenders where bank clients from German water providers to Italian regions say they were sold unsuitable financial products.

…

Former LIA executive Mustafa Zarti was so angry about bad investments that he cursed at the two bankers, Youssef Kabbaj and Nick Pentreath, in English and Arabic – telling them the lender had “screwed” the sovereign wealth fund, according to the LIA’s evidence at a London court hearing yesterday – after questioning some of the fund’s 2008 trades with Goldman, according to Catherine McDougall, a lawyer at a London law firm who was temporarily assigned to the LIA at the time.

“Get out of my country,” McDougall recalled Zarti as saying in a witness statement she prepared for the LIA in a $1 billion lawsuit against Goldman. The bankers gathered their things and left quickly, she said.

Zarti “launched into a very angry tirade, saying that he had a bad side as well as a good side and that he could come after their families,” McDougall said in the statement.

…

This week’s hearing is the first in the case that was filed in January. The LIA asked to schedule the lawsuit for a 30-day trial in January 2016.

Judge Vivien Rose today ordered Goldman to pay 200,000 pounds ($322,000) of the LIA’s legal fees from the bank’s bid to have the case thrown out. Goldman abandoned the attempt in August.

…

“It was readily apparent to me that Goldman had unfairly taken advantage of the L.I.A.’s lack of financial sophistication and the trust and confidence that the various members of the L.I.A. had reposed in them and had sold the L.I.A. $1 billion worth of derivative products that the L.I.A. did not properly understand,”

…

Roger Masefield, a lawyer for the LIA, told the judge at the hearing that the fund didn’t understand that it was investing in derivatives instead of shares, and wasn’t aware it was in a position to negotiate better terms for the trades.

“Their trust was misplaced,” he said.

The New York-based bank also said in its court documents that the lawsuit is a “paradigm of buyer’s remorse.”

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Tagged with: 401k, Africa, argentina, Banco de la Nacion Argentina, bank, banking, banking crime, banking crisis, bankster, Catherine McDougall, corporate crime, credit default swaps, Debt Crisis, deceit, deceive, deception, default, derivatives crisis, derivatives market, financial crisis, financial terrorist, Goldman Sachs, Greece, Hedge Fund, hedge fund manager, impunity, institutional crime, International Swaps and Derivatives Association, lawsuit, legal complaint, libya, Libyan Gold, london, lost treasure, lost trust, Mustafa Zarti, Nick Pentreath, organized crime, pension fund, ponzi scheme, retirement funds, Roger Masefield, Sovereign Debt, Sovereign Wealth Fund, steal with impunity, SWF, theft, wall street, Youssef Kabbaj, zero hedge
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One comment on “$60 Billion Sovereign Wealth Fund Screwed By Goldman Sachs”

RonMamita says:

October 14, 2014 at 10:52 am

By Peter Koenig

“Today you pretend making a coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), but in fact you’re their allies,” Those are the frank words by Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, the Argentinian President, spoken in a calm and secure voice at the UN General Assembly last Friday, 3 October 2014.

Similarly, she referred to the western financial system as economic terrorism, as in vultures – the vulture funds that thanks to New York judge Griesa have put Argentina – a solvent country, willing and capable of paying their debt, in default. He ruled that the vulture funds, Griesa’s clients and paymasters, needed to be paid in full, i.e. 100%, equal to US$ 1.5 billion, when close to 93% of all creditors agreed on a restructured reimbursement rate of about 20%.

Without any international right to interfere in the affairs of a sovereign country, Griesa would allow the vultures reaping in a profit margin well in excess of 1,000%. — Paul Singer, king of the ‘vulture capitalists’, knows no merci. He is in bed with Wall Street and Griesa – and with whomever other financial hooligans who share his greedy endeavors. Greed is their prayer. It’s knocked around the world. Exploits poor nations, makes them poorer, and keeps them dependent on the powers of money, being well aware that the poor are too weak to defend themselves.

Except for Argentina. Her able President Cristina Fernandez, speaks not only for her country, when she talks about victims of economic and financial terrorism, but for all those African, Latin American and Asian countries which are oppressed by the killing boots of Wall Street and the IMF. It cannot be said often enough – the IMF is a mere extended arm of the US Treasury and the FED.

Vulture capitalism exerted by these usual villains and the European Central Bank, a mere puppet of Wall Street and led by a former Wall Street banker, are responsible for the economic collapse of the western economy. They have driven countries like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain – and lately also Ukraine – into misery.

They have stolen their social safety nets, pensions, employment, housing, education, health care, water supply and other public infrastructure – by privatizing public capital for their private benefits. They could do so thanks to the connivance of corrupt leaders they first put in place with sham elections – or no elections at all.

Case in point is Greece, where the Parliament decided to dismiss the socialist Prime Minister George Papandreou, who attempted to launch a referendum in December 2011, asking the people whether they wanted the troika’s (IMF, ECB, European Commission) imposed second ‘rescue’ package of € 130 billion (after a first one on € 110 billion) that would drastically increase Greece’s sovereign debt and force literally a killer austerity program upon its people. At the onset of the manufactured crisis, in May 2008, Greece’s debt to GDP ratio was a manageable 105%. In 2014 the ratio is 175%.

Under the structural adjustment program social health care was basically abolished. Many cancer and other chronically ill patients were deprived of their free medical attendance, unemployed and destitute could not afford to pay full price for their medication and treatment – and quietly died.

Under extreme pressure from Germany and France – the infamous tandem Sarkozy / Merkel called Papandreou to meeting in Nice at the beginning of November 2011, literally ordering him to withdraw the referendum – or else. Papandreou went home, canceled the referendum on 3 November and resigned. He was promptly replaced by Parliament – without a public vote – by the neoliberal Lucas Papademos, former deputy head of the ECB and – a former Goldman Sachs executive, who allowed the dance of debt and destruction to continue.

Argentina would not allow such financial terrorism on its shores – not since they dared to counter the economically suffocating peso-dollar parity in 2001, allowing the country to start breathing and growing again; a highly distributive GDP growth allowing to cut poverty from above 60% in 2001to below 10% today.

The same escape from the western kleptomania was – and still is – open to Greece and all those southern European countries in the fangs of greed capitalism. But their leaders and finance ministers are goose stepping to the financial marching orders of Washington’s money masters, Wall Street, FED and IMF.

Ms. Fernandez did not mince her words. She also talked openly about western military terrorism, “You killed many innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan under the name of war against terrorism,” or as the new refrain goes – “Making war for Peace”. She referred to the West in general and to Washington in particular, for whom war and conflicts, weapons sales, is a means of economic survival, as the US economy depends to more than 50% on the military / security industrial complex and related industries and services.

Shamefully, many western leaders and representatives left the assembly hall when Ms. Fernandez spoke, of fear they may be associated with her views if they listened to her calling a spade a spade. Perhaps they feared the ridiculous western sanctions, if they don’t behave. It is sad to see spineless world leaders; so-called leaders (sic), who bend over backwards to please the powers that utterly exploit them, stealing their natural resources, putting their people and the environment in peril.

A terrorist is whoever does not conform to the western doctrine, whoever insists on national sovereignty – whoever defends their national interests over the voracious interference of Washington and its European puppets – and their killing bulldozer, NATO.

The UN should make it an obligation and expression of mutual respect that every country leader and representative attending the UN General Assembly must listen to all the speeches. Each country has a message to give – a message that in one way or another concerns all of us, as we are all connected as humans in a solidary union, regardless of political alliances.

The latest economic terrorism inflicted on Russia by the US supported Wall Street et al financial cabal is the down manipulation of the ruble vs the US dollar and other ‘western’ currencies. The ruble has lost 22% of its value since the beginning of 2014 and 15% in the last quarter alone. Call it ‘sanctions’ – if you will – for not bending to the political demands of Washington on Ukraine. The western MSM would like you to believe it has to do with the chaos and continuous murderous atrocities in Ukraine’s Donbass area, for which – of course – Russia is made the culprit, not Kiev’s gang of thugs, a Nazi government, created and funded by Obama and his western puppets.

Russia is now forced to buy dollars and Euros – what they least want and need – to stabilize her currency, the ruble. Buying dollars – playing even more into the sledgehammer of the empire – is certainly the last thing Russia wants to do. Currency manipulation is only possible due to the predatory US dollar system, where all international transactions have to be channeled through Wall Street and cleared through the privately owned BIS – Bank for International Settlements, whose owners are a similar lot of financial shenanigans as are those owning the FED. The expected outcome is a devalued ruble, shunned by investors.Little do they know that this usual western shortsightedness is but accelerating the process of Russia and China issuing a new combined currency, delinked form the dollar-euro fiat money and its SWIFT exchange system. In fact, it has already begun. The Central Bank of China has recently offered a hand to the EU, inviting the Euro as one of several currencies that will no longer need the western clearing system for transactions with China.President Fernandez puts the finger right on the wound when she refers to the entire western monetary system as vulture economics. She knows that such an economy is bound to falter and be replaced – gradually as may be – by one that is based on fairness, integrity and that respects nations’ sovereignty.

.

Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff. He worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe.

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