Transmitted by Email to
Mr. Gunnar Larson
406 West 25th Street
New York, New York 10001
g(a)xny.io
Re: Freedom of Information Law request No. 2022-090627: Appeal dated
November 2, 2022
of the Department of Financial Services’ November 1, 2022 response
Dear Mr. Larson:
By email dated November 2, 2022, you are appealing pursuant to New York
State Public Officers
Law Section 89, the Department of Financial Services’ (the “Department”)
November 1, 2022
response (the “Determination”) to your Freedom of Information Law (“FOIL”)
request No. 2022-
090627 for copies of:
“[M]emo requests records related to NY-DFS monitoring of $10,610,000,000 of
pledge
funds (detailed below) specific to financial inclusion. xNY.io would like
to receive any
and all records related to NY-DFS' monitoring of Goldman Sachs' potential
money
laundering and other abuses of Goldman project, One Million Black Women,
with $10B
in direct capital and $100M in charity investments:
https://www.goldmansachs.com/our-
commitments/sustainability/one-million-black-women/ xNY.io would like to
receive any
and all documents correlating NY-DFS monitoring of (or, confirming no
correlation) the
One Million Black Women fund related to any association to other Goldman
student
scholarship funds in Africa ... Furthermore, xNY.io would like to receive
any and all
documents, related to NY-DFS' regulatory scrutiny of interlocking
directorates at the
NAACP, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and PayPal with potential collusion in
leveraging
marketplace spoofing tactics (or, records confirming no spoofing tactics)
concerning
$810 million in pledge funds associated with the 2020 Mission Driven Banks
whitepaper:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rOXE7ierZcd8HlvNVy7hAYg7d86q_1dv/view?usp=…
ring Attached and below, kindly find outline of the $850M pledged: Goldman
Sachs
Industry: Financial Services Pledge Amount: $250 million Use of Funds:
Goldman Sachs
has committed $250 million for small business lending. Goldman Sachs will
not issue these loans directly since it is not an approved small business
loan provider in the United
States. Instead, it will provide the financing to CDFIs and other
mission-driven lenders to
make the loans. Wells Fargo Industry: Banking Pledge Amount: $50 million
Use of
Funds: Wells Fargo has pledged a $50 million investment in African American
MDIs.
See Press Release PayPal Industry: Financial Services Pledge Amount: $510
million Use
of Funds: PayPal has pledged $500 million for a long-term economic
opportunity fund to
support African American and underrepresented minority businesses and
communities.
The initiative will include “bolstering the company’s relationships with
community banks
and credit unions serving underrepresented minority communities, as well as
investing
directly into African American and minority led startups and
minority-focused
investment funds.” PayPal deposited $50 million in Optus Bank, an African
American
MDI in Columbia, South Carolina. PayPal will use another $10 million for
grants to
African American-owned businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic or
civil unrest
surrounding protests. The very best, Gunnar Larson.”
In your appeal, you state:
“For example, One Million Black Women's board of directors states inclusion
of
policy and social leadership from Apple. Mr. Bogdan, xNY.io - Bank.org has
filed another FOIL request concerning DFS' recent "Apple Card Report." The
Apple Card Report and associated DFS investigation focused on financial
inclusion metrics for women in New York State. Between the Apple Card
Report
and One Million Black Women being under DFS' umbrell of oversight, it would
appear no records being publicly available would signal potential
marketplace
spoofing.Furthermore, DFS' "Student Protection Unit" licenses and
supervises
student loan servicers, monitors student-related financial practices in New
York,
and educates and advocates for student consumers and their families about
available financial products and services.As a "Bill and Melinda Gates
Scholar"
and a "Blockchain Scholar" and a "Al Neuharth Freedom Forum Scholar" I am
aware of a scholarship program funded from New York targeting students in
Africa. Mr. Bogdan, from New York this fund advertises over $100M in
scholarships for online degrees for students in Africa.” [Sic]
The Determination informed you that Public Officers Law (“POL”) § 89(3)
requires a FOIL
request to reasonably describe the records sought meaning that the
description of the documents
sought must be sufficient to allow the agency to locateand identify the
documents requested.1
To
support its conclusion, the Determination explained that the New York State
Committee on Open
Government (the “Committee”), which is responsible for, inter alia, issuing
advisory opinions
regarding FOIL, has opined that “[w]hether a request reasonably describes
the records sought . . .
may be dependent upon the terms of a request, as well as the nature of an
agency’s filing or record-
keeping system.” Committee Opinion No.. FOIL-AO-16073 (July 17, 2006).
Additionally, in the
Committee’s Opinion No. FOIL-AO-11960 (February 17, 2000), it opined that a
FOIL request that
sought records ‘tending to support’ a particular statement, or ‘utilized’,
‘used’ or ‘relating to’ various activities of the Department of
Environmental Conservation” was not a reasonably
described request for records under POL Article 6. The Committee stated
that a response to such
a request “would involve making a series of judgments based on opinions,
some of which would
be subjective, mental impressions”, and require “ascertaining which records
might ‘tend to
support’ a statement [that] would involve an attempt to render a judgment
regarding the use, utility,
accuracy or value of records.” The Committee held that “for purposes of
[FOIL], a request for
such materials would not meet the standard of ‘reasonably describing’ the
records sought, for such
a request would not enable the [agency] to locate and identify the records
in the manner envisioned
by that statute.”
The Determination also informed you that your FOIL request specifically
failed to meet the
“reasonably describe” requirement in POL § 89(3) because of the very broad
nature of the records
requested and your use of such expansive phrases such as “any and all,” and
“relate to” when
applied to excessively broad categories.
I agree with the Determination’s conclusion that your FOIL request does not
reasonably describe
the records that you seek and your appeal also does not make your FOIL
request any clearer.
Therefore, I affirm the Determination.
Nevertheless, I conducted a de novo search of the Department’s records and
I found that the
Department does not possess any records regarding the Goldman Sachs’s
investment in the One
Million Black Women project.
Sincerely,
Christine M. Tomczak
Assistant Counsel
cc: NYS Committee on Open Government
One Commerce Plaza
99 Washington Avenue, Suite 650
Albany, NY 12231
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Tomczak, Christine (DFS) <christine.tomczak(a)dfs.ny.gov>
Date: Mon, Jan 30, 2023, 3:28 PM
Subject: FOIL # 2022-090627 Appeal
To: Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io>
Dear Mr. Larson,
See attached letter.
Christine M. Tomczak
Assistant Counsel
New York State Department of Financial Services
1 State Street, New York, New York 10004
