Malaysia Money Matters

My sister just brought home a brochure for Quartz 16 that she got from a show booth at a mall around the Melawati area - think it was Wangsa Walk. Anyway, I was surprised because I thought it was sold out ages ago. The background to this was sometime in 2012, when I was still looking for a property, Quartz 16 showed up on my radar. I tracked down the showroom - the adverts, banners and website all said that it was a soft launch only so you can only go and register your interest - but when I got there, what they told me was that a LOT of the choice units had already been booked. What pissed me off was that the sales lady told me that the bookings were all made PRIOR to the public launch of the advertising, so to me, what's the point of inviting the public to come register when you already have given priority to "sweetheart deals" with your so-called investor clubs and 'friends of the company director'? That's literally what she told me: friends of the d...

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...