Goldman's earlier questionable offshore deals

Following our story on Goldman Sachs' involvement in the Cayman Islands and Delaware for its allegedly fraudulent Abacus 2007 dealings (Goldman has denied fraud), we notice this from Offshore Alert:

"OffshoreAlert began exposing Stirling Cooke Brown Holdings in November, 1997 – the same month that the broker was taken public by Goldman Sachs at $22.50 per share in a $50 million IPO, after which Goldman continued to control 23% of the broker's shares through various onshore and offshore investment funds and had two seats on Stirling Cooke's small Board of Directors."

OffshoreAlert continued to expose Stirling Cooke relentlessly until the broker filed for bankruptcy in December, 2003 under the weight of numerous arbitrations and litigation in which several reinsurance contracts brokered by the firm were voided due to fraud. Its share price plummeted to zero – an outcome that was inevitable the day the shares were first publicly-listed.

"If OffshoreAlert could find out all of this negative information, it defied belief that a company the size of Goldman Sachs, with all of its resources, couldn't," says David Marchant, publisher of OffshoreAlert."

Offshore: a wonderland for questionable activity.