Tan Kin Lian's Blog: Ponzi scheme [2]

Saturday, July 24, 2010

Ponzi scheme [2]

Read this excellent article by Lucky Tan.

My view
I agree with Lucky Tan in his observation - the authority has time to catch people for illegal hawking, e.g. selling the newspaper of a registered political party, but they have no time to investigate ponzi schemes. Surely, they know that they have a duty to protect the public from being cheated?

3 comments:

Lye Khuen Way said...: In short, the Authority is having a very different sets of priorities.
Or there are too many issues to address !
Or dare I say, conflicting objectivesas well !
An example : the YOG's special lanes on some roads/Expressways.
It appear that it is alright for "buses" to exceed the 60 kmph limits and to always use the 2nd lanes ! Now that will explain why almost ALL Buses & heavy vechiles are hogging the 2nd or 3rd lanes. Actually, some do not "hog", they are going as fast as that Expressway limit is or even higher.

Wonder if any Ministers/PS/CEO of GLC and their PAs are reading these postings or not. But then, we have the unique Singapore EMU- cousin of the Ostrich, so I am not too hopeful that things will change for the better anytime soon.; July 24, 2010 11:43 AM
simple said...: Talking about ponzi schemes and the like, Goldman Sachs had to pay up hundreds of millions as a settlement for the charges instituted by the US govt in respect of their involvement in sales of credit-linked investments. In Singapore MAS had avowed that the situation here is different and did not warrant a similar action to be taken by them against parties like Morgan Stanley for sale of Pinnacle Notes. They are not interested to find any cause (even if different from MS's case) to take action.
Fyi, the latest development is that Series 7 of the Pinnacle Notes have died and investors will be getting back only about 2.5% of their principal sums as full and final redemption. This followed a string of series of similar notes which had already died with similar huge losses. Such humongous losses so fast must be a historical first and would suggest something very wrong with the manner the notes were structured, not dissimilar to what had happened about the same time in the US.
There are only 2 avenues of recourse left to the aggrieved investors - take the difficult and laborious FIDREC route
or legal/class action with no guarantee of results. It will be good if we can ascertain by survey the fate and decision of fellow investors.
In my case I fought the local FI and their lawyers at FIDREC and got a partial result which I'm unable to delve into with details because of the confidentiality undertaking. It is satisfying at least that the FI was unable to defend its "No libility" stand.; July 24, 2010 9:06 PM
Jp69 said...: If you go back through history you will find many things that are very bad for us that it was not possible to stop. Tobacco and Alcohol were actually advertised as being good for you in the past. If you said tobacco killed you could be sued. The tobacco company could "prove" the health benefits of tobacco by producing a 100 year old man in court who had smoked all of his life. They would claim all the tobacco dead died from other causes. I am ashamed to say my countrymen defended the shipping and consumption of opium using a moral position entirely guided by profit and control.

As a foreigner I dont comment on politics in Singpaore. From a consumer affairs point of view though I would say it is far too difficult for the public to report a scam and get taken seriously in Singapore.

It is a vicious circle. Nobody wants to report scams because there is no action and they fear legal reprisal or personal attack. In the scam post mortem the consumer groups and police claim they didn't take action because nobody reported the scam.

A simple look at the UK land banking plot schemes sold in Singapore shows they are all likely scams. Like deaths from tobacco however the actual "proof" requires collection of data over many years to prove failure by which time the land banking companies have made millions of dollars in profit and moved it offshore. You can find internet articles going back 5 years on land banking scams but no activity was taken until this year in singapore.

If you name a scam company as Mr Tans own case proves you will recieve letters and harrassment from high profile lawyers. To defend takes time and money and very often attack from the investors in the scam who refuse to accept they have been cheated or want to unload the scam on other investors before it is revealed.

Everyone should report scams when they see them. It is the only way to move the public and authority perception of the problem.; July 25, 2010 5:27 PM