it. The clients willingly complied with these demands because they understood it was necessary in order to participate in further such undervalued IPOs. Companies going public and their initial consumer stockholders are both defrauded by this practice. Use of offshore tax havens A 2016 report by Citizens for Tax Justice stated that "Goldman Sachs reports having 987 subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, 537 of which are in the Cayman Islands, despite not operating a single legitimate office in that country, according to its own website. The group officially holds $28.6 billion offshore." The report also noted several other major U.S. banks and companies use the same tax-avoidance tactics. In 2008, Goldman Sachs had an effective tax rate of only 1%, down from 34% the year before, and its tax liability decreased to $14 million in 2008, compared to $6 billion in 2007. Critics have argued that the reduction in Goldman Sachs's tax rate was achieved by shifting its earnings to subsidiaries in low or no-tax nations, such as the Cayman Islands. Involvement in the European sovereign debt crisis Goldman is being criticized for its involvement in the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis. Goldman Sachs is reported to have systematically helped the Greek government mask the true facts concerning its national debt between the years 1998 and 2009. In September 2009, Goldman Sachs, among others, created a special credit default swap (CDS) index to cover the high risk of Greece's national debt. The interest-rates of Greek national bonds soared, leading the Greek economy very close to bankruptcy in 2010 and 2011. Ties between Goldman Sachs and European leadership positions were another source of controversy. Lucas Papademos, Greece's former prime minister, ran the Central Bank of Greece at the time of the controversial derivatives deals with Goldman Sachs that enabled Greece to hide the size of its debt. Petros Christodoulou, General Manager of the Greek Public Debt Management Agency is a former employee of Goldman Sachs. Mario Monti, Italy's former prime minister and finance minister, who headed the new government that took over after Berlusconi's resignation, is an international adviser to Goldman Sachs. Otmar Issing, former board member of the Bundesbank and the Executive Board of the European Bank also advised Goldman Sachs. Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank and since 2021 prime minister of Italy, is the former managing director of Goldman Sachs International. António Borges, Head of the