Malaysia Money Matters

It started with what seemed to be a fairly innocent news piece about an announcement on a large development in Pahang, specifically in Gambang that would cover 250 acres. The purpose was to build a huge multi-faith complex ( excluding Islam of course, because... err .. well.. lets not go there ) that would house retail, function halls, a resort and most importantly, a final resting place ( ashes only, I think! ) for your dearly beloved and/or yourself of course. Going through their website , the stated intention is noble enough. Creating jobs, attracting tourists and so on. No doubt, it will help the local economy there which is about 30km away from Kuantan or a 3 hour drive from KL. However, look a bit further into their business model and it starts to look very much like an MLM where the product being sold are the columbarium niches at about USD700 a pop. Which is cheap now and what they are promising would be that each niche will triple in value or more in time - so it's e...

Just my thoughts on the issue - a couple of friends asked me about it, seeing that I'm in banking and all but at the time, I didn't know much about it - only what I read in the papers when the whole thing blew up. So being the usual KPC (kay poh chi, although I'm not a 'chi', tqvm); thought I'd do a bit of digging and while most people these days are very sceptical about what the government does (including yours truly), I must say that the raid by BNM and the police has its merits. Assessing the situation by fundamental principles of the set-up, operations and sales pitch by Genneva; there is a real disconnect. To break it down simply: It is not set up as a bank, it cannot accept deposits. It is set up like a retailer: "you buy gold from me" but it starts getting muddier because; They promise you physical gold but then persuade you, for practical reasons of the safety of your gold, to accept a promise on paper that you can get your gold at any...