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.
The subversion is not this latest bit of news, in which GS is submitting to the will of U.S. regulators by not offering their service domestically.
The subversion was their prior stance of keeping the fund under the artificial limit of 100 investors, by presenting it as a mutual fund of sorts, where many investors invest in the fund, and the fund invests in Facebook. Despite likely getting the exact details wrong, I believe that's the gist of it.
