A Sarawak Report article last month sparked an immediate flurry of arbitration panel rulings and then a court application in New York (which was rejected).
Behind the activity was the chairman of a New York arbitration tribunal – a body engaged to privately settle business disputes under the auspices of the American Arbitration Association’s International Centre for Dispute Resolution – Marc Goldstein.
He was responding to questions put to him by Sarawak Report over allegations that had been published over alleged partiality and potential conflicts of interest relating to the tribunal panel’s rulings in a case involving a Latin American telecom tower group, Continental Towers, Goldman Sachs and a private equity investor funded by Goldman Sachs, Peppertree Capital Management Group.
Goldstein’s panel ruled comprehensively against the Continental Towers majority shareholder, a Guatemalan businessman named Jorge Hernandez, in favour of the co-litigants Peppertree and Goldman Sachs in a judgement, upheld by the New York District Court in August, which not only forced the sale of the company but awarded costs and punitive damages of $354 million against Hernandez.
That extraordinary sum was, according to rulings and articles published by Goldstein, for defying earlier rulings in the case and allegedly carrying out a campaign of intimidation both against the arbitration panel itself and employees of Continental Towers, matters the tribunal described as “deeply troubling” noting the tactics used by the respondents (Hernandez) had become “increasingly disturbing”.
Hernandez had sacked the CEO and COO of Continental Towers (CT) after the opening of the case and denounced them to the Guatemalan and El Salvadoran authorities for alleged embezzlement of over a million dollars and also alleged collusion with the minority shareholders Peppertree and Goldman Sachs, who were funding a rival company in an attempted buy out of CT – in a plot, claims Hernandez, to squeeze him out of the company.
The AAA arbitration tribunal chaired by Goldstein had denounced the moves by Hernandez against his senior staff early on in the proceedings, issuing a ‘second partial award’ demanding their re-instatement in August 2022, calling the allegations part of “a multi-faceted effort . . . to present theTribunal and the Company’s Board a false narrative of misconduct and criminality by” the Company’s chief executive officer, Jorge Gaitan, and chief operating officer, Carol Echeverra.
Goldstein had a more personal grievance as well, which he has articulated extensively in his own blog site.
From early on in the case he too has been the butt of criticism by Hernandez along with requests that he stand aside on the grounds he allegedly skewed his rulings in favour of the plaintiffs.
Peppertree Capital Management group, had bought a 32% share in the Continental Towers/ Terra Towers group’s billion dollar business in Latin America, which builds and owns communications towers. with a view to potentially huge future earnings.
Financing Peppertree (which was bought out by TPG earlier this year) was Goldman Sachs’ asset management arm which had also taken a direct stake in the venture through a subsidiary AMLQ Holdings (CAY) Ltd owning 13% share.
To cut a long story short, the Goldman Sachs minority grouping (Peppertree and AMLQ) took their first opportunity, after a post purchase lock-in period, to demand that Continental Towers should sell the company for what the majority shareholder, the Guatemalan entrepreneur Jorge Hernandez, considered a derisory price …. to a smaller rival company that Goldman Sachs had also just happened to have invested in.
Squeeze Out Merger
It soon emerged that the deal devised by the Peppertree/ AMQL nexus would also give those Goldman Sachs financed companies a healthy share in the purchasing entity, leaving the majority owner of Continental Towers, Mr Hernandez, squeezed out of the business. For this reason such manoeuvres are generally termed “squeeze out mergers”.
Peppertree/ Goldman Sachs brought the matter to the New York based Arbitration Court in early 2021 to enforce their demand for the sale. Hernandez was resisting the sale not only on grounds that he viewed it as a low offer but also his view that the squeeze out involved a breach of trust and fraud.
A civil case to that effect was soon launched by Hernandez in Florida, followed by multiple criminal cases claiming fraud, criminal breach of trust and collusion by key members of staff (including the CEO and the COO) in several of the company’s operating jurisdictions, specifically Guatemala, El Salvador, Peru, the BVI and most recently in Panama.
The equally divided board had been used to nix contracts that would have benefitted the company, Hernandez claimed. Contracts which then went to the rival takeover company instead.
Hernandez/ Continental Towers further claimed that the minority group had suborned a group of company executives including the CEO, one Jorge Gaitan Jr, who had been assisting them in their plans and the COO, Carol Echeverría. An investigation into the CEO resulted in major embezzlement charges – the issuing of false cheques for travel expenses totalling $1.2 million – for which Gaitan has been charged in Guatemala. He was arrested earlier this year in El Salvador where he presently awaits extradition behind bars.
Hernandez had therefore been determined to make his case at the Arbitration Tribunal, which was that he was the victim of business malpractice and under no obligation to sell the company on the say-so of a minority group of shareholders.
Instead, Mr Goldstein and his panel had ruled in February 2022 that as a prelude to further proceedings the company must be sold to the present bidder and at the price demanded by the minority shareholders.
At which point the already ugly story became nastier. The defendants started to hurl shocking allegations against the Arbitrator himself, claiming he was biased towards Goldman Sachs and that was the reason behind rulings, which have indeed been considered arbitrary by seasoned observers such as Arbitration Watch.
Fuelling the allegations was an article published just one month after the controversial ruling in the anonymous website, Wall Street Whistleblower, alleging that Mr Goldstein had himself received a payment of $250,000 into an account at none other than Goldman Sachs that was opened and emptied all on one day on 29th June 2021, just three days following Goldstein’s appointment to chair the panel.
Referring to this story Hernandez’s lawyers claimed bias and asked for Goldstein to be replaced. In response, the panel has implied that they were behind the article.
Mr Goldstein has been far from silent on the matter – on his own website he provides a lengthy narrative on the issue, saying “In March 2022 an obscure website allegedly devoted to “whistleblowing” concerning Wall Street misconduct published an article aligned with the interests of the Respondents in an international arbitration in which I serve as the Tribunal Chair. The article falsely reported that, according to whistleblower-provided information, I had apparently accepted a $250,000 bribe from one of the Claimants at the time of my appointment.”
As previously reported by this website, the above statement notably does not specifically say that Mr Goldstein never held such an account nor received that sum, but states he “made a disclosure in the arbitration [that] reported to the Parties the falsity of the facts on which the accusation of corruption rested“.
This did not satisfy the lawyers for Jorge Hernandez who issued a request for the Chairman to be replaced or for him to provide an oath, according to the rules of the court as they cite it, that he had held no such account. They also demanded for Goldman Sachs to be subpoenaed to produce documents on the matter. Neither of these were agreed to by the Arbitrators.
The defending team then hired investigators who claimed to have proved that Mr Goldstein had been in email contact with servers in the Goldman Sachs New York HQ building, where he had claimed in his oath before taking office that he had zero ties.
In response, Mr Goldstein amended his original impartiality oath to acknowledge out he had a second cousin, a former partner at Goldman Sachs, who had by the time of the case left the bank and who had assured him he had no connection with the case before Goldstein took up the arbitration role. This apparently was his explanation for the detection of the email traffic.
Sarawak Report Enquiry Stirs Mayhem
However, the arbitrators’ firm stance against Hernandez, and determinations that his claims of embezzlement and fraud were false, have in the meantime come up against the findings of prosecutors in Latin American countries where the subsidiaries of Continental Towers hold valuable assets.
In both El Salvador and Guatemala there have been investigations and charges pressed on the grounds of alleged fraud based on those very same complaints.
The former CEO, Jorge Gaitan, was arrested through INTERPOL in El Salvador in March on a warrant from Guatemala, and the COO, Carole Echeverría likewise was arrested in June. The charges against them include allegations that both had colluded in the fraudulent undermining of Continental Towers and the squeeze out merger as well as the embezzlement accusations.
This despite the fact that both had been declared innocent by Goldstein’s tribunal who had for two years demanded they be re-instated and had legitimised the plaintiff Peppertree in continuing to pay their salaries.
Those arrests were followed in September by a dramatic issuing of Red Notice warrants by the authorities in El Salvador against three senior Peppertree personnel, United States citizens whom Goldstein had ruled in favour of. The charges cited against them likewise include aggravated fraud, illicit association, and aggravated extortion against the Continental Towers group, according to reports.
Earlier this month a ruling by the Supreme Court of El Salvador further suspended the the New York arbitration ruling, specifically the sale and winding up of local assets of Continental Towers, until the criminal proceedings were resolved. Separately, the Guatemalan courts have appointed a ‘Judicial Intervener’ to act as the legal representative of the company in their jurisdiction until judgements are reached on charges brought there.
In the course of investigating these developments, potentially involving violations by Goldman Sachs during its Deferred Prosecution Agreement over 1MDB, Sarawak Report was passed a separate and previously unpublished report by the same email traffic investigation company (GreyList Trace) which had caused Mr Goldstein to revise his impartiality oath in June 2022 to acknowledge communications with a second cousin who had worked at the bank.
The second report, produced in November 2022, indicates that Goldstein had also sent emails that were received by a senior named official on the Goldman Sachs Management Committee who holds an important role in the bank’s asset management division. (GreyList Trace admits to a minus 5% inaccuracy potential in their findings).
Sarawak Report asked if this was the second cousin, still employed, or a separate contact at the bank or a communication that Goldstein denies?
Mr Goldstein responded immediately via an ‘Order’ issued by his own tribunal panel, which he then circulated to the several parties to the case, as well as Sarawak Report. In this document he named the official at Goldman Sachs who had been privately referred to in the original request for comment sent to him personally by Sarawak Report.
The Order consisted of a letter of denial combined with a demand that the Arbitration should keep ‘under seal’ (make secret) any attempts by Jorge Hernandez/Continental Towers to employ the new report to further challenge the ruling of the panel or district court. This on the grounds that the report could be deployed to further challenge the integrity of the chairman of the panel.
In his denial Goldstein answers Sarawak Report’s question, citing he “declares under penalties of perjury that he does not have and never has had any relationship or communication with [The Goldman Sachs cited in the email tracing report] for any purpose.”
The attached Order goes on to instruct that the recipients of this letter should take it, together with the Order and the original email from Sarawak Report, and deliver it immediately by hand to the District Court in New York with an instruction to the court that any attempts to bring the matter up there should likewise be kept ‘under seal’ i.e. secret.
The very next day, September 23rd, the lawyers for Peppertree Capital and Goldman Sachs dutifully scurried round to the court to lodge that request on behalf of the tribunal which had found so handsomely in their favour.
Attached, as ordered, were a copy of Goldstein’s letter of denial and also the email requesting comment from Sarawak Report, which the lawyers requested should all be ‘placed under seal’ (kept secret from the public). [Case 1:22-cv-01761-LAK Document 455 Filed 10/06/25]
However, by October it seems the relevant judge, Lewis Kaplan, had not responded to this demand, provoking an anxious further request on 7th October for ‘urgent’ attention to be given to the matter from the Peppertree/Goldman lawyers.[Case 1:22-cv-01761-LAK Document 456 Filed 10/08/25]
After all, up till this point the Arbitration Panel had succeeded in gaining acceptance of all its rulings in favour of the Goldman group of minority shareholders, largely on the narrow basis that the parties had signed up to the process and should abide by it.
Rejected & Published!
The written rebuff against the presumption of the arbitrators makes clear that the documents, having been presented by Goldstein to the court, should be placed on an ‘open docket’:
“The application of October 7th – being a request for judicial action upon which the Court is now acting – will be filed and will not be sealed’.
Thereby making those documents available for all to see. [Case 1:22-cv-01761-LAK Document 456 Filed 10/08/25 & Case 1:22-cv-01761-LAK Document 455 Filed 10/06/25]. So, in seeking to silence the enquiry by Sarawak Report it turns out that Chairman Goldstein has counter-productively published it to the world.
Silence From Goldman Sachs (and Goldstein)
Meanwhile, Sarawak Report has sought comment from Goldman Sachs on the assumption by Marc Goldstein that the bank would publicly corroborate the denials made in his statement/letter.
His statement that he ‘assumes’ the bank would publicly support his testimony was as follows:
“Mr. Goldstein by his signature on this letter declares under penalties of perjury that he does not have and never has had any relationship or communication with Mx [Goldman Sachs official] for any purpose.
He also declares under penalties of perjury that he has never received any form of payment from Goldman Sachs, directly or indirectly, other than arbitrator fees and expenses in this arbitration and a prior arbitration that was disclosed at the time of his appointment.
Mr. Goldstein is prepared to testify to these facts and to be cross-examined.
We assume that corroborative testimony would be forthcoming from [Goldman Sachs official] and Goldman Sachs.”
Sarawak Report has addressed multiple emails and a call to Goldman Sachs’s media office to request that the bank and the senior official (who is now named in court documents, thanks to Mr Goldstein) respond, as assumed, to issue corroborative testimony in accordance with the arbitration panel’s official letter.
However, the bank has not replied and nor has the official named by Goldstein.
Sarawak Report has also asked Mr Goldstein to clarify the above statement as to whether he has ever had an account at the bank and to detail the fees he refers to. Were these, as would be normal, paid by the Arbitration Service rather than through Goldman Sachs?
Yet he too has provided no further response.
A Wife Speaks Out
Amidst the silence, one person has not been backward in speaking out to Sarawak Report. The lawyer representing the wife of none other than the imprisoned former CEO of Continental Towers, Jorge Alberto Gaitan.
Maria Cristina Gonzalez de Gaitan, has waded into this dispute with her own domestic complaint, contacting us through her lawyer to repeat allegations against her husband who she claims was having an affair with his colleague, the COO Carol Echeverría, with whom he has been charged for conspiring to assist the Goldman Sachs funded ‘squeeze out merger’.
Ms Gonzalez has obtained numerous photos and documents, including from her husband’s mobile phone, featuring his alleged affair with Ms Echeverria and alleged complicity with Peppertree Capital. Her complaints include the claim that incentives provided to Mr Gaitan by Peppertree Management to gain his cooperation in assisting a takeover, included paying his legal expenses which she says also translated into help in funding a custody battle, by which he has prevented her seeing her children for almost two years.
Maria Christina claims she has obtained emails and chats between his circle of colleagues and certain lawyers to the company and Peppertree itself, which she says she provided to the authorities who issued the Red Notices last month.
Sarawak Report understands from sources close to the investigations that further connected allegations have been raised in yet another criminal complaint lodged in a separate Latin American country related to the sprawling interests of Continental Towers.
Mutual assistance notices have been sent to trace money transfers that could shed significant light on the unusual and venomous backdrop to this case involving further alleged malpractices by the powerful American bank at a time when it was on notice over 1MDB.
See Mr Goldstein’s Order and statement below which can be found in an open filing (together with supporting and un-redacted documents) at the Eastern District Court of New York.
September 22, 2025
BY EMAIL- URGENT
Re: Telecom Business Solution LLC et al. v. Terra Towers Corp., et al, ICDR Case No. 01-21-0000-4309; Telecom Business Solution, LLC et al. v. Terra Towers Corp. et al., 1:22-cv-01761-LAK; Terra Towers Corp. et al. v. Telecom Business Solution LLC et al., 1:22-cv-07301-LAKTo All Counsel:
As the members of the Arbitral Tribunal. we write to alert you to an exceptional and urgent situation. Early this morning the Tribunal’s Chair, Mr. Goldstein, received the email annexed to this letter. It comes from a person who, according to her own LinkedIn and Wikipedia pages, is an
“activist” journalist and blogger based in the United Kingdom. She purports to be in possession of information, evidently provided to her by persons aligned with the Respondents in the arbitration,
raising anew the baseless allegations that were made and published initially in 2022 that Mr. Goldstein had been bribed at the time of his appointment by the parent company of Claimant AMLQ Holdings, i.e. Goldman Sachs. The information that this writer purports to have in her
possession suggests that such an improper payment was effected through a secret connection between Mr. Goldstein and M[x Goldman Sachs official] – who according to Goldman Sachs’s website is [head] of Goldman Sachs [important division]. Mr. Goldstein by his signature on this letter declares under penalties of perjury that he does not have and never has had any relationship or communication with M[x Goldman Sachs official] for any purpose.
He also declares under penalties of perjury that he has never received any form of payment from Goldman Sachs, directly or indirectly, other than arbitrator fees and expenses in this arbitration and a prior arbitration that was disclosed at the time of his appointment. Mr. Goldstein is prepared to testify to these facts and to be cross-examined. We assume that corroborative testimony would be forthcoming from M[x Goldmans Sachs official] and Goldman Sachs.
Our urgent concern is that motions may be filed by Respondents on the public dockets of the above-referenced civil actions seeking relief from Judgments entered by Judge Kaplan (the “Court”), or other relief, based on “new evidence” consisting of the Goldman Sachs facts referenced in the annexed email. We are seriously concerned that publication on the docket of these falsehoods before their falsity can be established in the proceedings would cause further irreparable harm to Mr. Goldstein’s professional reputation, aggravating the harm sustained as a consequence of the website publications discussed in the Fifth Partial Final Award that were the foundation for the Tribunal’s award of punitive damages. We believe that the public’s interest in the Court’s adjudication of such motions can be served at a later date by the disclosure, in the Court’s discretion, of those elements of the Parties’ submissions that are material to the adjudication. We believe this comports with the protocol that was observed by the Parties with the approval of the Court up to the time of the Fifth Partial Final Award.
Therefore we ORDER that one or more Parties transmit this letter to the Court on an immediate urgent hand delivery basis, without docketing in the ECF System, in support of an application to the Court for an Order directing that the Clerk’s office be notified that any such motions for relief from prior Judgments confirming the Tribunal’s Awards, and for relief
from the Judgment that dismissed the action to disqualify the Tribunal, and any other filings that make allegations of personal misconduct by Chair Goldstein or any other member of the Tribunal, should be permitted to be made on the electronic docket only under seal until further order of the Court. We further ORDER that the Party or Parties intending to make such submission to the Court immediately notify the Tribunal that they are doing so.
Respectfully,