Thaindian News

Apr 28 (THAINDIAN NEWS) In the case which the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has filed against Goldman Sachs, one name seems to be at the center of every news report. Fabrice Tourre is a French born banker who graduated from Stanford who is being accused of some very serious frauds against investors. Fabrice spoke out in his own defense in front of a Senate subcommittee on Tuesday, April 27 , saying, “I deny categorically the SEC’s allegations,” at a standing-room-only hearing of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in Washington. “I will defend myself in court against this false claim,” he said, adding that a deal at the center of the suit “was not designed to fail.”

Protesters were lined up dressed in prison uniforms and holding up signs which read “shame” and shouting such things as, “Too big to fail but not too big for jail.” He was among seven current and former Goldman Sachs executives, which includes the Chief Executive Officer, Lloyd Blankfield. They will all speak out on the firm’s mortgage securities transactions in the last few years, leading up to the largest financial crisis which the United States has faced since the Great Depression. Goldman Sachs is contesting the suit, stating that they did not withhold information from the investors.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican Senator from Maine, said in her opening Statement that “even legal practices can raise ethical concerns…There is something unseemly about Goldman betting against the housing market at the same time as it is selling to its clients mortgage backed securities containing toxic loans,” Collins said. “The whole building is about to collapse anytime now,” Tourre wrote to a friend in a January 2007 e-mail, according to the SEC complaint. John McCain said that although he is not sure if Goldman Sachs actually did anything illegal… “But from the reading of these e-mails and the information that this committee has uncovered there’s no doubt that their behavior was unethical,” McCain said. “The American people will render a judgment as well as the courts.”