NEW YORK — Goldman Sachs has shown with its eye-popping quarterly profits that it is still the king of Wall Street, but the crown has lost some of its luster.

Four days after being accused by the government of fraud in the subprime mortgage mess, the big investment bank reported blowout first-quarter earnings Tuesday of $3.3 billion, nearly double from the same period a year ago. But it didn't get to celebrate.

Goldman spent the day defending itself against the Securities and Exchange Commission's charges and saw its troubles mount:

n Britain's financial regulator began an investigation into the bank's London-based international operations.

• The European Commission called for tighter regulation of the complex financial investments at the heart of the SEC case.

• Investors brushed off the earnings and sent Goldman's stock falling more than 2 percent. In the past three days, the company's market value has declined by nearly $13 billion.

Goldman Sachs Group executives held conference calls with banking industry analysts and reporters Tuesday, but the questions focused more on the SEC charges than on the firm's earnings. The charges grew out of a 2007 transaction involving collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, complex mortgage-related securities that many analysts say helped accelerate the financial crisis and recession when they plunged in value.

The government said Goldman did not tell two clients that the CDOs they bought were crafted in part by billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson, who was betting on them to fail. Goldman has denied the charge.