By Saeed Azhar and Anna Peverieri
NEW YORK, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said he had reluctantly accepted Chief Legal Officer Kathy Ruemmler’s resignation, he told CNBC on Friday and stressed that he respected her decision to leave.
“I reluctantly accepted her resignation, but I respect her decision,” he told CNBC in an interview.
Recent documents released by the U.S. Justice Department showed Ruemmler accepted gifts from the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and advised him on how to address media inquiries regarding his crimes.
The departure of Ruemmler, who was among the top executive officers of the Wall Street firm, is the most high-profile banking exit after the release of the latest Epstein documents.
Solomon told CNBC that Ruemmler called him on Thursday afternoon and told him the press coverage of the work she had done previously had “just gotten to a level of noise and distraction that she thought was distracting the firm.”
“It was putting her in a position where it was hard for her to execute on her job and her responsibilities, and she just thought it was time to step away,” Solomon said.
Ruemmler had a large number of communications with Epstein from 2014 to 2019, even after the disgraced financier’s 2008 guilty plea for procuring a person under the age of 18 for prostitution, the documents showed.
Before joining Goldman Sachs in 2020, Ruemmler was global chair of the white collar defense and investigations practice at Latham & Watkins LLP.
Ruemmler, who was also White House counsel during the Obama administration, referred to Epstein in emails as “Uncle Jeffrey” and received gifts from him including wine and a handbag, the documents show.
Epstein also called Ruemmler’s cell phone when he was arrested on July 6, 2019, among other calls he made that night, according to two documents that cited notes from law enforcement officials.
Ruemmler was “one of the most prominent defense attorneys in the country and it is well established that she knew Epstein,” a spokesperson for Ruemmler told Reuters in an email.
“It is unsurprising that he reached out to her. It was a brief call and Ms. Ruemmler took no action afterwards,” the spokesperson said.
In a statement, Ruemmler said it had been her privilege to help oversee Goldman’s legal, reputational, and regulatory matters, and to help enhance the firm’s strong risk management processes while ensuring it lives by its core value of integrity.
“My responsibility is to put Goldman Sachs’ interests first,” she said.
Solomon said in a statement on Thursday that Ruemmler was one of the most accomplished professionals in her field, and on Friday he said Goldman’s management team had worked very closely with her over the last six years.
“We know her as a professional and we know her as a human being. And I think that’s lost sometimes in some of the dialogue,” Solomon said on CNBC. “I’m disappointed that it got to this.”
(Reporting by Anna Peverieri in Barcelona and Saeed Azhar in New York; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, Nick Zieminski and Daniel Wallis)
