The sole purpose of the entity they created was to allow more investors to participate than the SEC individually allows. When doing so attracts world-wide media

The sole purpose of the entity they created was to allow more investors to participate than the SEC individually allows. When doing so attracts world-wide media attention, there is little difference between that and publicly selling the stock of a private company, which is not allowed. They were doing this in the US before everyone said "WTF? Isn't that illegal?" It was a fine line GS was was walking (surely they expected and were counting on some hype), and it appears that it worked a little too well. Edit: clarified.