More on corporate (and country scale) fraud

 Following on from an earlier review of two corporate fraud books this holiday season fraud reviews were taken to a higher level..... 

 

Listing gives : 

"A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE FINANCIAL TIMES AND FORTUNE MAGAZINE.

The epic story of how a young social climber from Malaysia pulled off one of the biggest financial heists in history.

In 2015, rumours began circulating that billions of dollars had been stolen from a Malaysian investment fund. The mastermind of the heist was twenty-seven-year-old Jho Low, a serial fabulist from an upper-middle-class Malaysian family, who had carefully built his reputation as a member of the jet-setting elite by arranging and financing elaborate parties for Wall Street bankers, celebrities, and even royalty.

With the aid of Goldman Sachs and others, Low stole billions of dollars, right under the nose of global financial industry watchdogs. He used the money to finance elections, purchase luxury real estate, throw champagne-drenched parties, and bankroll Hollywood films like The Wolf of Wall Street. 

Billion Dollar Whale reveals how this silver-tongued con man, a ‘modern Gatsby’, emerged from obscurity to pull off one of the most audacious financial heists the world has ever seen, and how the financial industry let him. It is a classic harrowing parable of hubris and greed in the financial world."

As of 2021 Jho Low is still on the run but the net tightens after his rather nice ship was impounded.

The Equanimity, a luxury yacht belonging to fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho, was seized and brought to Malaysia in August 2018. It was later auctioned off [Lai Seng Sin/Reuters]

The Wizard of lies tells the story of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scam that imploded in 2017 losing $Billions of investors money. In this excellent film Robert De Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer deliver outstanding performances. Rolling through the time when the fund implodes, little is uncovered about the on-going motives of Madoff continuing with a multi year fraud but the fall is dramatic. Playing Madoff's wife Pfeiffer fails to follow how the family's fall from grace can be so precipitous. The company enablers are aware of the fraud and choose to be complicit in it's continuance.

The SEC explanation of their failure to detect this con is here... and concludes with ....

"As the foregoing demonstrates, despite numerous credible and detailed complaints, the SEC never properly examined or investigated Madofi's trading and never took the necessary, but basic, steps to determine if Madoff was operating a Ponzi scheme. Had these efforts been made with appropriate follow-up at any time beginning in June of 1992 until December 2008, the SEC could have uncovered the Ponzi scheme well before Madoff confessed."

Rolling Stone digs in on regulatory and operational failures at the SEC

This longer book about the Madoff mega scam.

NO ONE WOULD LISTEN: A TRUE FINANCIAL THRILLER
BY HARRY MARKOPOLOS
HARDCOVER, 376 PAGES
JOHN WILEY & SONS