Federal Reserve fines Goldman Sachs $36.3m

Goldman Sachs has agreed to pay $36.3m (€32.5m) over allegations that former employees obtained confidential documents from the Federal Reserve in a settlement that requires the bank to beef up its policies to prevent another lapse.

The Fed is also pursuing a $337,500 fine and a permanent banking ban against a former Goldman Sachs managing director, Joseph Jiampietro, over his unauthorised use and disclosure of Fed secrets.

Starting in 2012, Mr Jiampietro, an investment banker who formerly worked at the Federal Deposit Insurance, received bank regulators’ unauthorised supervisory information and used it for his work at Goldman Sachs, the Fed said.

In 2014, a Goldman Sachs banker, Rohit Bansal, allegedly shared confidential Fed documents with Mr Jiampietro that Mr Bansal got from a New York Fed employee he had previously worked with, the Fed said.

According to an earlier $50m settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services, Bansal obtained about 35 documents on about 20 occasions from his friend Jason Gross.

The information Mr Bansal got from Mr Gross related to a bank that was a Goldman Sachs client, according to that settlement.

“Upon discovering that Rohit Bansal had improperly obtained information from his former employer, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, we immediately notified regulators, including the Federal Reserve,” said Michael DuVally, a Goldman Sachs spokesman.

“The allegations filed against Mr Jiampietro are demonstrably false, and rely solely on the testimony of a single and inherently incredible witness,” Adam Ford, Mr Jiampietro’s lawyer, said.