Goldman Sachs is accused of trying to hide key information and bypassing a congressional investigation into the causes of the financial crisis, according to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission (FCIC). On June 4, the FCIC issued a subpoena to Goldman for failing to comply with the panel’s request back in January for documents and interviews over Goldman’s synthetic and hybrid collateralized debt obligations.
The deadline to provide the information was Feb. 26. The FCIC later gave Goldman several deadline extensions. Still, the requested information never materialized.
“They stretched us out thinking they played the game cleverly,” FCIC Vice Chairman Bill Thomas said in a June 8 article in USA Today. “They may have more to cover up than we thought.”
Phil Angelides, chairman of the FCIC, had similar comments for Goldman. In a June 7 story on CNBC, he stated the following:
“We are not going to let the American people be played for chumps here. We should not be forced to play ‘Where’s Waldo’ on behalf of the America people.”
Goldman Sachs also is facing a civil fraud lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in connection to a mortgage-related investment that it created and sold in 2007.