When I saw this petition I was thinking the world doesn’t want plastic single use bottles. Then I thought about the health of Coke, and I contemplated healthy drinks as sustainable and wholistic.
The oil of plastic is an issue given the wars fought in its name rather than Tesla free energy.
In the past we used to be able to gain a 5 cents for returning glass bottles. It was nice to drink from glass and the public were encouraged to recycle. I think that in the short term is a better process.
My last point is that I don’t think corporations are capable of true sustainability given the profit motive outweighs the human benefit. Profit is the market signal not sustainability. GDP and economics does not reward true sustainability which would be minimising consumption. Instead through advertising, chemicals, psychological techniques, fear, demand for goods or services is either addicts people, restricts supply and political influence is what maximises profits. Profit is the motivator not human wellbeing. We need a new form of economics that is wholistics and values based where wellbeing and balance is rewarded. This is the true sustainability.
At Davos 2020, Coca-Cola’s head of sustainability, Bea Perez, said that Coca-Cola will not stop producing single-use plastics because consumers “still want them.” She went on to say that it would alienate customers and impact Coca-Cola’s bottom line. “Customers like them because they reseal and are lightweight.”
Needless to say, this is a disheartening thing to hear from the person in charge of sustainability at one of the largest companies in the world. Coca-Cola is one of the worst contributors to plastic pollution, producing about three million tons of plastic packaging a year – equivalent to 200,000 bottles a minute.
In 2019, it was found to be the most polluting brand in a global audit of plastic waste by the charity Break Free from Plastic. Although Coca-Cola has made a pledge to recycle as many plastic bottles as possible by 2030, they are still flagrantly contributing to the world’s plastic waste, at a time when our planet cannot afford for LITERALLY ANYONE to solely be concerned about their cash flow.
Coca-Cola is one of the most profitable companies in the world – they should be able to find a new, sustainable way to bottle their products to the satisfaction of their consumers. It’s the least they can do. Tell Coca-Cola that you DO NOT want them to produce or sell plastic bottles. Sign and Share today to say NO to Coca-Cola’s Plastic Plans.
The coronavirus is all over the news, I don’t watch TV so I don’t have any fear. I also know if my life is to end by a virus it will. I know we are on journey’s and I don’t fear life. The core issue is greed and public/private partnerships where companies are having control over decisions that impact humanity.
According to a friend, people are panicking, stocks are running low and it is causing all sorts of problems in global populations. I feel for the Chinese people whose lives have been turned upside down. The problem of mass panic is not helped by the media coverage as fear and powerlessness grows.
I did research into pandemics many years ago and whether Australia can respond to a problem and coordinate. I wonder today why the research was commissioned?
Coincidently, I have been sick overnight, which is rare for me. I got some bug/virus. I threw up all night. It felt like poison. I sit here with a temperature, I can feel my kidney’s cleaning my blood as they are sore and my body aches and is exhausted. Perhaps that was the birthday gift I gave to myself yesterday to raise my inner awareness of sickness at this time.
I often get inspiration in my life. So this is the topic I feel to explore. I would like to add in before I start that I actually contacted the Gates Foundation when in London when I was a Rotary Peace Scholar, I was given direct access as Rotary and Gates are working together. I was seeking support for my SPEAK UP award which is a Sustainability and Peace Encouragement Aware for Kids to Unite People. I took this project to the top of Rotary. It was to empower children to solve environmental problems and learn about peace (harmony). Nothing happened. I note Rotary is involved in vaccinations. Rotarians may want to investigate this. Ref. https://www.worldpeacefull.com/childrens-speak-up-award/
Another point relating to vaccines is The Australian Government campaign ‘No Jab, No Pay’, this was championed by News Limited a Rupert Murdoch company. This campaign uses the loss of benefits to influence vaccinations of children. This would impact the poor more and is clearly not about free choice as there is a negative consequence. There is an anti-vaccine lobby who believe vaccines cause autism. Autistic children have excellent mental skills but emotionally they are underdeveloped. A little like the movie Rainman, living in their own worlds.
Ref. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Jab,_No_Pay
I have also been offered to work with the CSIRO where as a market analyst I was to market genetically modified organisations (GMOs). That week a sculpture was given to my partner. It was metal with prongs all different sizes. There was a twist at the end (DNA). It was at a time when I had $20 in my account. I chose not to take the job (it was mine) as I did not want to participate in science that was profit driven and likely to cause greater harm to natural systems. so I said no. Ref. https://newspunch.com/study-links-gmos-to-cancer-kidney-damage-severe-hormonal-disruption/
One final point before we discuss coronavirus, is information coming out about iPhones, 5G and electromagnetic frequency microwaves (EMF) which is stated to lower sperm counts and it is being asserted it causes cancer Ref: https://www.naturalhealth365.com/cell-phone-radiation-3138.html
Today I felt to look at the coronavirus as my sense of empathy is heightened when I am sick and to work out who is behind it.
Firstly, I’d like to say what right does anyone have creating viruses? Nature rebalances without human intervention. Where I am studying I walked past labs with the sign “Biosecurity”. Then I realised the weaponization of viruses. This is the fusion of security and biological warfare. I felt concern.
My first thought is the lack of ethics of our world leaders and business leaders with a single focused agenda to benefit the few over the many without any sense of the cost of intervening in natural processes that are finely tuned. Some may say ‘playing God with life itself’. It is an easy argument to refer to overpopulation given it is evident we have a large population on the planet. It is noteworthy that 1% own 46% of the world’s assets, another issue that is not discussed in respect of economic systems rewarding the concentration of wealth. The disproportionate power that accumulates to around 2,000 people. This gives a small group the power to change our world in their image without our permission. This planet has been circulating the sun for 4 billion years, human life has been here 1 minute to midnight. Yet we presume we know how to rebalance nature and human activity when we have not looked into our own discord which expresses in – greed, anger, war, jealousy, judgement, ruthlessness and power over others. Nature constantly rebalances. This imbalance is behind credit creation so we all buy more of the things we don’t need. There is no discussion about marketing campaigns, media spin, rewarding those who accumulate material wealth, built in redundancy, excessive packaging, plastics, coal burning energy grids, IT industries and technocracy (non renewable products) and this constant focus on economic growth which is expanding the disruption in reality. The focus is not on genuinely solving our psychological imbalance. Instead the focus is to shift the problem to the poorest people in the world or the so-called ‘enemies’ (range of labels) and the unquestioned pathology that has no issue with reducing population in civilian areas through warfare. Crimes Against Humanity.
Paul Erlich is the American biologist who discussed population and is the alter boy used to justify murdering large numbers of people (genocide) for the greater good. Ref https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich
Many environmentalists may agree given their studies of species, boundaries, food supply, water, numbers, ecosphere’s etc. Certainly, nature seeks to balance and species do die off when they are out of balance with natural homeostasis.
However, the intent behind depopulation is not looking into our deeper imbalance as we are completely disconnected from nature, from living in harmony with the earth, from healthy human relationships and a cosmology which ensures we observe and respect the nature around us. Instead our focus is narrow, our world becomes economics, jobs, families, technology but we have no language or words for the silent natural signals that rebalance our world in every moment. As the sum of the parts knows the whole. It is intelligent design not smart or clever.
Buckminster Fuller was a visionary who did not agree with the depopulation perspective but rather inventing system that harmonise with earth systems. Here is his story and visions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
Those in leadership positions and authority are the most out of balance as the intent is profit maximisation not human health and happiness. The distortion is in making money. The profit intent changes or distorts what we see and how to deal with a human problem. We have the ‘new rich who are specialised and made money from their pursuits, that does not make them wise stewards. Wisdom cannot be purchased, love is the driver of wisdom. They would not think to look at the discord and disharmony in their own mindsets. It is in my view simplistic to regard depopulation as the solution for resource balance and life on earth. Sir David Attenborough believes in depopulation but I would say to him that when we get the conditions right (natural) we will not reproduce. I didn’t have children as I followed my purpose. I knew not to have children. So learning to tune into nature is a clue. The structural violence of inequality forms the foundation to excess births due to survival and customs. So education, empowerment of women, restoring reproductive rights. This bumps up against patriarchy and religion that wants women bare foot and pregnant. Female inequality and poverty (devalue poor) all linked and it drills down to the imbalance between the masculine and feminine. A core issue not discussed in this context. Many of those women giving birth to large families is a result of having no say over birth control and whose purpose is to be ‘mothers’ not equal members of the human family. Men (group) need or expectation to control is another core problem where men won’t go there or call out ‘feminist’ to deflect from their sense of being out of control and their fear of the feminine. Mother’s are powerful.
Therefore, the poor do utilise their children to help them grow food, they use considerable energy for survival as that 1% at the very top control the resources. Property ownership is controlled by the wealthy and a unconscious belief they are bred to rule. There are unquestioned beliefs that drive the depopulation agenda, inequality and insecurity is at the centre.
In the West we pay our way out of feelings of ‘need’ without any thought about where things come from and how life has its own abundance flow and natural timings.
If we are to survive we need to completely change the way we think and venture deep into how we feel about life and what we truly want. We require a cosmology that aligns humanity with earth systems.
REAL HOPES program is one of those renewable values based framework’s that would guide wiser choices. Depopulation in my view is not going to do it. https://www.worldpeacefull.com/real-hope-program/a-new-model/
Other ideas can be found in my book: https://www.academia.edu/27265551/A_Fool_for_Peace_1_A_FOOL_FOR_PEACE_A_Fool_for_Peace_2
The first article is about who owns the coronavirus. Note it is from a Christian perspective. I do not advocate to demonise people but to solve the problem. However, I am open to all voices.
The second one provides more information about the coronavirus patent and depopulation agenda’s. The problem we face as citizens is that we don’t have the collective voice to be able to stop what is clearly not in humanity’s interests. We are losing our sense of community and looking out for each other, for what you do to another returns to the self. Our world is connected but disconnected technologically, interestingly enough Bill Gates was the driver of these systems of control
Believe it or not, a coronavirus strain is a patented by the The Pirbright Institute, which is partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Another strain, which was isolated from humans, is owned by the CDC.
The patent page for coronavirus explains that it “may be used as a vaccine for treating and/or preventing a disease, such as infectious bronchitis, in a subject,” suggesting that this is just another weaponized viral strain designed to sell more useless, deadly vaccines, while at the same time killing off a few thousand, or perhaps a few million, people.
A close look at the patent page also shows that the Pirbright Institute owns all sorts of other virus patents, including one for African swine fever virus, which is listed as a “vaccine.”
It is thus no surprise that Bill Gates is a Pirbright Institute financial backer, seeing as how he’s one of the most aggressive, vaccine-pushing “philanthropists” on the planet.
And here is another patent for Coronavirus, isolated from humans — Patent US7220852B1 – CORONAVIRUS a.k.a. SARS. The patent was granted to the CDC and the “inventors” are all American:
The way this whole coronavirus situation is taking shape would seem to be exactly what Gates once proposed as a “solution” to the alleged problem of “overpopulation.”
At an infamous TED Talk, Gates explained that vaccines are one of the keys to reducing global population levels, and what better way to do that than to unleash patented coronavirus on the masses in order to later introduce a patented vaccine for it?
Bill and Melinda Gates hosted “Event 201” back in October, described as a “high-level pandemic exercise”
What’s further interesting is that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-hosted a “high-level pandemic exercise” back in October that involved discussions about how “public / private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”
Held in partnership with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the World Economic Forum, this latest endeavor by Bill Gates is highly suspicious, to say the least, especially when considering that it was held just in time for the coronavirus outbreak.
As is usually the case with suspicious disease outbreaks that get the media and academia talking about new vaccines and public-private partnerships, Bill Gates’ fingerprints are almost always hiding in the background.
And this is exactly the case with coronaviruses, which could accomplish many of Gates’ expectations for the future, including mass depopulation, mass vaccination and mass consolidation of government power.
“These events are increasing, and they are disruptive to health, economies, and society,” reads an announcement about “Event 201,” as they called it, or the meeting with Gates and his cronies from back in October.
“Managing these events already strains global capacity, even absent a pandemic threat. Experts agree that it is only a matter of time before one of these pandemics becomes global – a pandemic with potentially catastrophic consequences. A severe pandemic, which becomes ‘Event 201,’ would require reliable cooperation among several industries, national governments, and key international institutions.”
This reads like a predictive script for what we’re now seeing with coronavirus, as governments around the world scramble to “manage” this deadly outbreak with martial law, vaccine fast-tracking, quarantines and plenty of fear-mongering.
“If we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [the global population] by perhaps about 10 to 15 percent,” Gates is infamously quoted as saying about the true intent of his “humanitarian” efforts.
Professor Shoshana Zuboff speaks about Silicon Valley shadow operation. We won’t get the data. Hi-Tech claim data they take from our lives without our permission, private lives without permission, analyse data, took it, illegitimate profit. Bypassing our awareness. Without consent.
I, Susan Carew, do not consent to any extraction of my data or the residual data in order for companies/government/intelligence to predict my behaviour with the objective of selling to me, controlling me or suppressing my democratic rights. I will not use a iPhone ever as it takes away my rights, distracts me from my life and purpose, and exposes me to radiation which likely causes cancer and health damage. I do not consent to other radiation emitters around me as it impacts my health and safety. Moreover, the rampant consumption is the outcome of data usage mapping our lives and is the very core issue of ecological collapse. I cannot participate in the destruction of my planet or imprisonment of human society as a global citizen. Today is my birthday and it is the gift I give to myself.
Surveillance capitalism is embedded in infrastructure projects to control the population. We are addicted to our iPhones and this is the foundation for a system of control that will not serve people but public/private partnerships to further industry. The previous blog explains the serious health effects of using iPhones emitting radiation.
Whenever you bring up ‘surveillance of phones’ in a conversation often the counter argument will quickly state: “I have nothing to hide” which is a misconception and a form of denial where the person doesn’t want to go there as they depend on their phone. They don’t question their learned dependency.
I was at the railway station today. It is a recent infrastructure project where the station was raised above a road and enlarged with surveillance equipment evident. I saw at least 15 cameras and then the LED lights which can also surveil. I saw the free public phone (recently made free). I found myself standing out of the view of cameras as I didn’t want facial recognition given my privacy. I have had surveillance happen to me when I went to a Senate inquiry in Canberra called the Inquiry into the impact of the exercise of law enforcement and intelligence powers on the freedom of the press. The hearing I went to was intelligence agencies talking about this topic. In addition, a few months earlier walked to Parliament to make homelessness visible. I am also a former community radio person, analyst and advocate for peace education. When I walked through a public square a light came on brightly in a public space as I walked through the space. I was the only person there. I saw police insignia on the camera. I knew it was facial recognition and I was uncomfortable as I feel my democratic right to participate is being targeted. My mother was stopped by the police a short time after, in the car I had driven to the inquiry. So the technology in my view can adversely impact those of us advocating for democracy and a better world.
Shoshana Zuboff indicates we willingly give our personal information believing that information is under our control, which we do not. We provide this personal information is the least important part of the information they collect about us according to Shoshana Zuboff.
Placing our heads in the sand is not an option if you want democratic freedom. If you wish to be a cyborg then just keep burying your head in your iPhone to avoid the reality of your life and courageously facing challenges to awaken and become aware.
key points and notes:
Google earth was a CIA start up;
surveillance capitalism is also offline;
we don’t know the predictive implications;
supermarket chain knew a woman was pregnant before she did;
predict personality, sexual orientation, political orientation – range of things we didn’t intend to reveal;
residual knowledge upload photos – Facebook photos, predictive signals companies can lift from photos;
algorithms facial recognition software;
predicting human behaviour and predictions are sold;
data sold to anyone, could be used for oppression;
facial photos facilitate totalitarian regimes;
processes disguised and operate in stealth;
engineered to be indecipherable to create ignorance in vast group of users;
Facebook massive scale contagion experiments, subliminal cues planted in Facebook pages influence offline real world;
two key findings manipulate subliminal cues to change real world behaviour and emotion, we can exercise this power and methods whilst BYPASSING USER AWARENESS;
Pokemon,go https://www.pokemongo.com/en-au/ – invented by Google. Google the inventor of surveillance capitalism – John Henke;
Invented keyhole which is a CIA Google Earth start up. Pokémon is not a happy game, they brought it to market, the big game on top of little game precisely emulates logic of surveillance capitalism. Sell click through rate pays for clicks on website, click to buy button. Paid for real world equivalent (footfall) to get real bodies into businesses. Buy lure modules;
Use rewards and punishment of game to herd you to the city for those paying for your body to turn up, the real game is to get you to spend, we predict where you will be, it is of value when it works;
You believe you are being served, you will not notice or complain. The shadow operation will remain hidden, you will not ask questions;
Want to know about your walk in the park, what you are doing in car, your home etc;
Net security system has a microphone built into it, voices, conversations, watching t.v., who is visiting, shouting over breakfast – predictive value;
Google’s business to misdirect to engineer ignorance in mechanism undetectable, if confronted deny until habituate;
Don’t have to think;
We give consent, privacy, your device held hostage to you agreeing, we maintain functionality, third parties will do what they do;
Third parties have no responsibility;
Silicon valley surveillance capitalism broke through in 2002;
More money came from surveillance capital;
Google acquired android, made great margin, rich. Make iPhone cheap, get price down, more on the iPhone more, facebook used network drones (growing markets);
Facebook’s intention doesn’t share information on how company works. Facebook Australia told its business customers that it has so much data about 6.6 million young adults and teenagers, predict mood shifts, stressed, fatigue, frightened. We can alert you when they need a CONFIDENCE BOOST, the exact moment when they are likely to need this. Send advert for a sexy black jacket (going on a date). Peak vulnerability.
2018 – Chris Whiley – Cambridge Analytica – analysed 18 million citizens. They wanted to understand their inner demons, how to target their demons, fear, anger, paranoia, trigger emotions manipulate them to click on website, join group, what to read, who to hang out with, who to vote for. Manipulate innocent young people. From commercial to political outcomes. Cambridge Analytica is a parasite on a huge host surveillance capitalism;
Mark Zuckerberg announces future of privacy, fear of litigation, not genuine;
When on facebook there is no right to privacy, no expectation of privacy they think;
VPN – send data via private networks;
Amish example of simplicity. Technology we use, not to control us.
In the global public interest. Trump made suggestions that you have to eliminate control by bankers over regulators. The same can be said in a range of industries. To make it illegal for politicians to use their power for family members. They use charities to funnel money. The essence is this: “To better understand how corporations consistently manage to maneuver ostensibly independent agencies in their interest…”
QUESTION: you spoke about trump draining the swamp, how would you drain the swamp, we agree it needs draining?
ANSWER: The first thing you have to do is eliminate the control of the regulatory agencies by the bankers. Enough is enough. We must start there. We will NEVER see any hope for the future until we eliminate that control. We must also make it a criminal offense for any politician to use their power for a family member as Biden, Clintons, and countless others have done. They should also be prohibited from having any sort of charity they set up which is just a funnel for money to buy votes. Both Hillary did that as well as John McCain and they are not the only politicians to have used that ploy.
With the departures of Gary Cohn, Steve Bannon, and Dina Powell from the White House, has Goldman Sachs’ initial influence on the Trump Administration dwindled?
The wrote: “Jay Clayton, Goldman Sachs’ past and likely future lawyer, is not alone in the Trump-Goldman axis at the SEC. To better understand how corporations consistently manage to maneuver ostensibly independent agencies in their interest, it is instructive to consider one of Clayon’s “Senior Policy Advisors,” Alan Cohen.
Before Cohen joined the SEC in the summer of 2017, he “served as Goldman’s compliance head for 13 years, after joining the bank in 2004 as a partner from law firm O’Melveny & Myers.” It makes sense that Clayton would reach out to Goldman for senior advisors — not only did Clayton represent Goldman while Cohen was helping run the megabank, Clayton’s wife worked at Goldman Sachs until Clayton’s ascent to the SEC. It’s a small and quite rich circle in which the likes of Clayton and Cohen run.
But while the “how” of Cohen’s rise to SEC prominence is sadly intuitive, the “what the heck” nature of the hiring merits significant explication.
First, what does it mean to have been in charge of “compliance” for Goldman? Per their website, “the global compliance division is dedicated to protecting the reputation of the firm and managing risk across all business areas.” The compliance division is supposed to “ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and determine how the firm can appropriately pursue global market opportunities.”
How did Goldman do under Cohen’s reign? Not well. Not well at all.
Recent weeks have brought an avalanche of news about how Goldman Sachs is at the center of an epically corrupt Malaysian state investment fund called 1MDB. Indeed, just this past Monday (November 12th, 2018), “Goldman Sachs shares slumped the most since November 2011 after Malaysia’s finance minister demanded a full refund of fees it paid the bank tied to a doomed investment fund.”
Why is Malaysia furious at Goldman Sachs? Goldman played a key financial architecture role in the 1MDB fraud. Their engineering assistance to the scheme has already led a senior Goldman banker to plead guilty and has touched Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein (Blankfein twice met with the Malaysian fraudster, Jho Low)
It was Cohen’s job to ensure Goldman bankers did not do several of the specific acts that “former senior Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner pleaded guilty to,” launder money and violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by paying bribes.
These actions by Goldman under Cohen’s watch are also actions governed in part by the SEC itself. Cohen failed to prevent crimes policed by the SEC, and now he is a senior figure at the SEC.
Given the laxity of current ethics law, so long as Cohen doesn’t specifically meddle in an investigation into Goldman Sachs like 1MDB, he needn’t recuse. That means Cohen can advise on broader enforcement priority issues that implicate SEC policy toward money laundering and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, even if he cannot interfere in this specific investigation.
The corruption of Goldman that 1MDB represents is, of course, not the exception but rather the norm for Goldman under Cohen’s watch.
For instance, the SEC is now investigating allegations from a former senior investment banker at Goldman Sachs, James Katzman. Katzman “raised concerns about what he viewed as unethical conduct at the bank” via Goldman’s whistle-blower hotline in 2014. Rather than take Katzman’s concerns seriously, “David M. Solomon, who is now Goldman’s chief executive, urged Mr. Katzman to move past his complaints, and he left the firm in 2015.”
Indeed, Katzman initially felt silenced by a confidentiality agreement with Goldman. A serious compliance director would seek to act on the concerns of a whistle-blower, rather than stifle their complaints.
There are other issues. For instance, one can hardly avoid laughing at the dark comedy of the Forbes headline, “A Bad Omen When Goldman Sachs’ Compliance Staff Is Charged With Insider Trading,” noting that “Perhaps Goldman Sachs needs to hire compliance staff to monitor its compliance staff.”
However, the biggest issues at Goldman under Cohen’s watch cut to the core of the Great Recession.
Consider the take of the Justice Department on Cohen’s handiwork. “The Justice Department, along with federal and state partners, announced today a $5.06 billion settlement with Goldman Sachs related to Goldman’s conduct in the packaging, securitization, marketing, sale and issuance of residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) between 2005 and 2007.”
If you watched The Big Short and came away unimpressed by the ethics of Goldman Sachs, or if you agree with Matt Taibbi’s colorful claim that the “world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” then you think Alan Cohen failed at Goldman Sachs.
But enough about the past; what is the SEC currently doing that would make Clayton and Cohen especially valuable to Goldman Sachs?
Per Bloomberg, one big priority for Wall Street is to make sure that European investor protections “don’t spread to America.” Bloomberg notes that the “dustup is playing out behind closed doors in Washington at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where brokers want the agency to make clear they can continue combining the cost of financial research and trading in one bill for U.S. customers — the practice that is being banned in the European Union.”
And who is at the center of this closed door effort by the SEC to ensure Goldman and comparable firms can reap profits European regulators have determined are unfair? Alan Cohen, whose hiring was announced by a press release stating that Cohen was hired in part to advise Clayton on issues including “new European Union regulations (e.g. MiFID II).”
Pro-investor groups and large state pension systems that manage money for government employees object to this set up.
Typically, Goldman Sachs is the favorite in a dispute against “investor groups” and “state pension systems” because Goldman is richer, more powerful, and savvier about the inner workings of the government than its opponents.
Hopefully, that is not always going to be true.
The Revolving Door Project has announced an Independent Federal Agencies Leadership Tracker because agencies like the SEC are obscure to nearly everyone who doesn’t have business before them. In other words, banks like Goldman Sachs wield influence over the SEC because it matters enormously and directly to their bottom line. Figures like Alan Cohen are not exceptions but the norm.
The Goldman Sachs headquarters in Manhattan, as shown on Dec. 17. Malaysia has filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs and two of its former executives on Monday over their alleged role in the ransacking of a multibillion-dollar state investment fund.
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The U.S. bank Goldman Sachs is facing criminal charges in Malaysia in connection with a massive corruption scheme known as the 1MDB scandal.
That scandal — involving billions of dollars allegedly siphoned from the “1MDB” development fund — has already brought down Malaysia’s former prime minister. Several of the fund’s top administrators in Malaysia have been charged with corruption in both U.S. and Malaysian courts. They deny the allegations.
Now, for the first time, Goldman Sachs, which helped the fund’s administrators raise some $6.5 billion, faces charges in connection to the probe. Malaysian authorities are seeking billions of dollars in fines, and up to 10 years prison time for each of the four people charged.
Two former Goldman Sachs bankers, Tim Leissner and Roger Ng Chong Hwa, are among those facing new charges in Malaysia. Also facing charges are two Malaysians: Jasmine Loo Ai Swan, the fund’s former general counsel, and Jho Low, a financier who is believed to have masterminded the large-scale fraud.
Leissner, Chong Hwa and Jho Low were also charged with crimes last month by the U.S. Department of Justice. Leissner has pleaded guilty.
In a statement, Malaysia’s attorney general, Tommy Thomas, says Goldman Sachs knew that the money raised would be “misappropriated and fraudulently diverted” by corrupt Malaysian officials. The bank profited from unusually high fees for its work on the Malaysian fund, and employees and directors “received large bonuses and enhanced career prospects” as a result of their illegal actions, Thomas wrote.
The bank has denied any wrongdoing.
“We believe these charges are misdirected, will vigorously defend them and look forward to the opportunity to present our case,” Goldman Sachs said in a statement quoted by MarketWatch.
Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Najib Razak created the state investment fund known as 1Malaysia Development Berhad or 1MDB, in 2009. The fund was supposed to promote global investment in Malaysia.
According to court records, billions of dollars were redirected from that fund and used to purchase luxury assets — many in the U.S. — or transferred directly to accounts controlled by Najib, his family or his associates. The fund itself wound up some $11 billion in debt.
Multiple countries, including the United States, are investigating the financial misconduct involved in the massive corruption scandal.
Leaked documents and journalists’ investigations brought the scheme to public attention in 2015. But Najib quashed further examination of the financial dealings of the fund, and he remained in power for three more years.
He was finally ousted after losing an election this May — ending six decades of continuous rule by his party.
Shortly after Najib lost power, police raided one of his residences and confiscated cash, jewelry and designer handbags. A few months later, Najib was arrested on charges of money laundering, bribery and criminal breach of trust. His wife, Rosmah Mansor, is also facing charges.
