October 28, 2019 - A second amended complaint was filed.

March 11, 2019 - An amended complaint was filed.

December 20, 2018 - An investor in shares of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York over alleged violations of Federal Securities Laws by The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. in connection with certain allegedly false and misleading statements made between February 28, 2014, and December 17, 2018.

On March 7, 2016, an article was published entitled “Ex-Goldman Banker to Malaysia Fund Said Subpoenaed in U.S. Probe,” reporting that the U.S. Justice Department had subpoenaed former Goldman Sachs managing director Leissner in late February in connection with a probe linked to 1Malaysia Development Bhd. (“1MDB”), a Malaysian state-owned investment fund set up in 2009. Goldman Sachs has since been the subject of investigations by the U.S. Justice Department regarding the multibillion-dollar fraud and money-laundering scheme involving 1MDB, for which Goldman Sachs was the primary bond underwriter.

On November 1, 2018, U.S. federal prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York unsealed indictments against former Goldman Sachs managing directors Leissner and Ng Chong Hwa, also known as Roger Ng related to the 1MDB probe, explicitly describing them as “agents acting within the scope of their employment on behalf of” the Company “with the intent, at least in part, to benefit” Goldman Sachs. That same day, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York announced that Leissner’s guilty plea was unsealed for “a two-count criminal information charging Leissner with conspiring to launder money and conspiring to violate the FCPA [Foreign Corrupt Practices Act] by both paying bribes to various Malaysian and Abu Dhabi officials and circumventing the internal accounting controls of the Financial Institution while he was employed by it.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office also stated that, “[a]ccording to court filings, Leissner has been ordered to forfeit $43,700,000 as a result of his crimes.”
On November 8, 2018, a report was published detailing the personal involvement of Goldman Sachs’s then-Chief Executive Officer (“CEO”), Lloyd Blankfein, in a meeting to establish ties with Malaysia and its new sovereign wealth fund that was referenced in the court documents unsealed the prior week.

In a November 8, 2018 article entitled “Goldman’s Blankfein Said to Have Attended 2009 1MDB Meeting,” it was noted that “Blankfein was the unidentified high-ranking Goldman Sachs executive referenced in U.S. court documents who attended a 2009 meeting with the former Malaysian prime minister,” and that “[t]he meeting was arranged with the help of men who are now tied to the subsequent plundering of the 1MDB fund[.]”
On November 12, 2018, Malaysian government officials denounced Goldman Sachs’s role in the 1MDB scandal. Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad stated that “[t]here is evidence that Goldman Sachs has done things that are wrong” and “[o]bviously we have been cheated through the compliance by Goldman Sachs people.” Meanwhile, the country’s Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said that Malaysia would seek a “full refund” of the approximately $600 million in fees that the Company earned in connection with 1MDB’s $6.5 billion bond deal.

Shares of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) declined from $275.31 per share in March 2018 to as low as $154.31 per share on December 24, 2018.

According to the complaint the plaintiff alleges on behalf of purchasers of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) common shares between February 28, 2014, and December 17, 2018, that the defendants violated Federal Securities Laws.

More specifically, the plaintiff claims that between February 28, 2014, and December 17, 2018, the Defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that Goldman Sachs participated in a fraud and money-laundering scheme in collusion with 1MDB, that the foregoing conduct, when revealed, would foreseeably subject Goldman Sachs to heightened regulatory investigation and enforcement, and that as a result, Goldman Sachs’s public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.