Goldman Sachs Group Inc. was sued by former managing director Christopher Rollins who claims the bank engaged in an "unlawful campaign of retaliation" after he blew the whistle on its concealment of anti-money-laundering compliance failures.

Goldman Sachs executives sought to work with a "notorious European businessman" who had a history of legal problems and then steered a series of transactions linked to the financier past the company’s anti-money-laundering controls, according to the lawsuit, filed Thursday in Manhattan federal court. Rollins didn’t name the businessman in the complaint.

Two senior bankers, Michael Daffey and John Storey, first met with the financier on board his 200-foot superyacht in the Mediterranean Sea, Rollins said. The financier also had a jet and claimed to have more than $1 billion to invest, according to the complaint.

From September 2015 to August 2016, the two bankers and former vice chairman Michael Sherwood, used their influence to steer a series of transactions linked to the financier past anti-money-laundering controls, Rollins claimed. They included the issuance of $1.2 billion in bonds structured by an “obscure broker” affiliated with the financier, opening an official client account in New York for an offshore fund the businessman controlled as well as other transactions, according to a suit filed on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan.

Goldman discharged Rollins after a foreign affiliate of the firm alleged that he had allowed trades by a client that it had refused to serve because of compliance concerns, according to Financial Industry Regulatory Authority records. Rollins is alleged to have done so without getting approval from the bank’s compliance department or senior management, according to records.

However Rollins says in the lawsuit that while he met the financier socially he never sought his business and Goldman Sachs sought to falsely blame him for the firm’s dealings with the man.

The lawsuit is without merit and Goldman Sachs will contest it, said Michael DuVally, a spokesman for the bank.

Rollins, who worked at Goldman Sachs until February 2017, worked alongside Ralston Roberts as co-head of European execution services at Goldman until he left the bank.

The suit is Rollins v. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., 18-cv-7162, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

This article was provided by Bloomberg News.