Goldman Sachs has recently been in the news regarding active litigation where Goldman Sachs’ former client, the Libyan Investment Authority “is claiming it lost $1 billion (£750 million) on nine trades executed by Goldman Sachs in 2008 on banks such as Citigroup and UniCredit, as well as the French company EDF.” The media has reported leaked information from the case, including evidence that former sales executive, Youssef Kabbaj negotiated with a prostituted person and then agreed to purchase her along with her friend for sex to “entertain” him and a friend for the evening. His friend is allegedly the younger brother of a Libyan official. This case encompasses not only numerous violations of business law, criminal law, and ethics, but it also highlights the relationship between big business and commercial sex.
The affiliation of commercial sex and white collar employees is not unique to this case. Big business and high ranking executive jobs have traditionally been male-dominated, with women only rarely passing through the “glass ceiling” and securing some of these top-paying and powerful positions. While there are likely a number of contributing reasons for this, a well-known reason is the antiquated patriarchal mentality that remains pervasive both in America and throughout the world—that this is a man’s world, where women are less capable and less likely to succeed in positions of power.
The economics of the white collar pay scale also play into the cross-section of commercial sex with big business. High-ranking business executives have some of the highest incomes in the world. Having a seemingly endless amount of money inevitably leads to thinking that anything desired is available for purchase—including women, and especially women who do not have financial resources. More often than not, women who sell sex are doing so because a pimp is forcing them to. Women who sell sex without a pimp tend to be homeless, drug-addicted, under-educated, and/or childhood sexual abuse victims. Prostitution chooses them precisely because we live in a world where men, who are in positions of power, have copious funds, and therefore, feel they can buy whatever—or whomever—they want. Prostitution, is considered the world’s oldest crime—this is because men have been in the positions of power for so long forcing many women to survive by servicing men’s sexual desires.
As long as this dynamic continues to exist, men and women can never truly be equal. Women will continue to be measured based on their sexuality and their worth and value, in the eyes of men, will be dependent on their sexuality. As long as there are women for sale, how will any woman ever be looked at for more than her sexuality?
The CSE Institute is disheartened by not only the actions of this former Goldman Sachs employee, but also by the way the media has framed the act of purchasing sex with respect to this story. One article started, “Goldman Sachs bankers paid for prostitutes, private jets and five-star hotels and held business meetings on yachts to win business from a Libyan investment fund set up under Gaddafi regime, the high court in London was told yesterday.” This statement blatantly lumps the purchase of extravagant items such as private jets and hotels with the purchase of a human being—available to perform any sexual desire that is fathomable. In the same way a government official can be bribed with a fancy meal and nice hotel, he can be bribed with a subservient woman that he can perform his most wild sexual desires on. Being purchased for sex needs to be recognized for what it truly is—paying for the ability to rape, abuse, dominate, control, and take advantage of a subservient human being trying to survive. It is by no means equivalent to flying in a plane or staying in a hotel and it is time society recognize the danger in this thinking.
The CSE Institute therefore encourages businesses to recognize their unique role in preventing sex trafficking and sexual exploitation by adopting and putting into practice, strict, zero tolerance policies with respect to purchasing sex—whether the employee purchased sex for themselves or purchased sex on behalf of a client. Prostitution is not a victimless crime and women are not mere sexual objects in a male-dominated opulent lifestyle. Furthermore, buying sex is not normal or inevitable and cannot be justified by the “boys will be boys” mentality. The purchase of a human being for sex should be treated with the same severity as any other sexual offense in an effort to deter purchasers from exploiting a vulnerable population.