Goldman Sachs & Sex Trafficking
The New York Times has another opinion piece targeting Goldman Sachs (one begins to wonder if there are no other bad guys on the face of the planet to focus on) but this time tying the investment bankers to “recent case in New York City, prosecutors say that a 15-year-old girl was drugged, tied up, raped and sold to johns.”
Here is the connection. In 2000, the private equity group at Goldman bought a 16% stake in Village Voice, the famous alternative newspaper group. In 2006 Village Voice bought an online classified company, similar to Craig’s List, called Backpage.com. Backpage advertises for cars to jobs to childcare. But it also does a brisk business in adult classifieds. When Craig’s list stopped allowing adult classifieds, Backpage picked up where they left off. Backpage has 70 percent of the market for prostitution ads, according to AIM Group that is a watchdog group that estimates revenue attributable to this kind of advertising.
