Manhattan's district attorney believed to have questions about Goldman Sachs's behaviour before and during financial crisis

Manhattan's top law enforcer is believed to have issued subpoenas to Goldman Sachs as he investigates the firm's activity during the credit crisis.

Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance Jr is pursuing claims made by an official senate investigation into Wall Street's role in the housing market collapse.

The report, published in April, singled out Goldman Sachs for particular criticism, accusing the bank of misleading buyers of mortgage-linked investments. The bank encouraged buyers to invest in mortgage-related securities even as it was betting heavily against the mortgage market, according to the report.

Senator Carl Levin, a persistent critic of the bank, accused Goldman executives, including chief executive Lloyd Blankfein, of giving "misleading and inaccurate" evidence to the committee. Goldman said its executives' testimony was "truthful and accurate".

The report was referred to the US department of justice and the financial watchdog the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which are also investigating.

"This is just another thorn in Goldman's side," said Peter Henning, a professor of law at Wayne State University in Detroit, referring to the negative publicity Goldman has suffered from government and the media since the financial crisis began three years ago. The subpoena was the first stage of an investigation, Henning said.

Vance, the son of president Jimmy Carter's secretary of state, was elected Manhattan's district attorney in 2009. Earlier this year he said that his office had active investigations into Wall Street "across the board" and called for his powers to be expanded in order to tackle large-scale white-collar crime. The Manhattan DA's office has tackled many high-profile white-collar cases, from BCCI to Tyco.

A subpoena is only a request for information and does not mean the company is a target of a criminal investigation.

Shares in Goldman dropped by 1.3% on the news, with other banking stocks also losing ground.

Levin heads the senate permanent subcommittee on investigations. Its report, published seven weeks ago, said Goldman had sold mortgage-linked derivatives to clients at inflated prices, and misled them about exactly what they were buying. By doing so, the committee said, Goldman protected itself from the ravages of the credit crunch, and deliberately inflicted as much financial pain as possible on some of its clients to maximise its profits. The committee's conclusions were swiftly challenged by the bank.

The report also included details of emails sent by senior Goldman executives. These appeared to show growing concern within the bank in early 2007 that the US housing market was about to crash.

Fourteen months ago, Goldman was hit by charges that it had cheated investors out of more than $1bn (£611m). That case, which was brought by the SEC, related to a financial tool called Abacus. This was a "collateralised debt obligation", consisting of a group of mortgage-backed securities. The SEC accused Goldman of misleading the buyers of Abacus because it did not reveal that US hedge fund, Paulson & Co, had been allowed to design it, and had then taken a short position – betting that Abacus's value would fall. Paulson made $1bn.

The SEC charges put Goldman's working practices under major scrutiny. Fabrice Tourre, the banker who had designed Abacus, was grilled by Levin's committee over emails he sent which suggested he knew that the "complex, highly leveraged, exotic" trades were a disaster waiting to happen.

Goldman settled with the SEC in July 2010, agreeing to pay a $550m fine. The episode, though, exposed other CDOs designed by Goldman. One, a $1bn package called Timberwolf, was notoriously described as a "shitty deal" by a Goldman insider. An Australian hedge fund which bought into Timberwolf soon found itself insolvent, after the value of its assets rapidly slumped.

The US authorities have struggled to secure convictions against many Wall Street players relating to the events that led to the biggest financial crisis in decades. Last month, though, investigators secured the conviction of billionaire hedge fund boss Raj Rajaratnam over insider trading chargesVance, 56, has headed the Manhatten district attorney's office for the last 17 months. In that role he is closely involved with the sexual assault charges filed against Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund.

In May, Vance suffered a personal setback when two police officers charged with rape were cleared of almost all the charges against them.

• This article was amended on 8 June 2011. The original said Vance was appointed Manhattan's district attorney in 2009. This has been corrected.