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Chilton blasts 'puny' fine in case where Goldman Sachs used fake trades
A 'Puny' Fine for Goldman Sachs Goof: Chilton Blasts Deal
By Kaja Whitehouse and Mark DeCambre
New York Post
Saturday, December 8, 2012
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/puny_fine_for_gs_goof_Uz1kN2oW00iC...
An outspoken regulator lashed out at a $1.5 million settlement between Goldman Sachs and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, calling the deal a steal for the Wall Street bank.
Bart Chilton, a CFTC commissioner, described the cash amount as "puny" and "a slap on the wrist" when compared to the whopping $8.3 billion trade at the center of the case.
In 2007, a Goldman trader hid the outsize trade as the market unraveled.
"This is another example of where puny penalties send the wrong message for these guys who are breaking the law," Chilton told The Post.
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"It's not even a sneeze for them," he said of the fine, which is roughly equivalent to what Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein would have pocketed in one week in 2007, when he earned $68 million.
Chilton was the sole dissenter on a 3-1 vote to fine Goldman.
CFTC Chairman Gary Gensler, who worked at Goldman Sachs for 18 years, recused himself from the case.
The Goldman case centers on Marshall Taylor, a former Goldman trader who allegedly established an unauthorized series of complex derivative trades totaling roughly $8.3 billion and hid it from his superiors.
Taylor's trades resulted in losses at Goldman of more than $118 million after they were discovered.
The CFTC fined Goldman for failing to have proper risk management tools in place to detect the rogue trade.
Taylor concocted a complicated scheme of entering fake trades in order to mask his actual trades in so-called futures contracts known as S&P e-minis.
"Goldman failed to have policies or procedures reasonably designed to detect and prevent the manual entry of fabricated futures trades into its front-office systems," the CFTC’s report said in its complaint yesterday.
"Taylor's activity was flagged by our controls on Dec. 14, 2007, with no impact to customer funds," a Goldman spokesman said in a statement. "Since these events, we have enhanced our controls."
Critics like Chilton, however, argue that such small fines on trades that could result in big hits to the system can become just the cost of banks doing business.
Chilton, who has been with the CFTC since 2007, is lobbying the agency to raise its fines so that firms start to pay attention to the rules. He has proposed fines be increased to $1 million per violation for firms and $250,000 per violation for individuals.
Under that scenario, Goldman would face a maximum fine of $60 million, he said.
"The financial firms know we are understaffed and we don't have the resources to take them to court," he noted. "They lowball us on these settlement offers -- sort of daring us to take them to court."
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