KUALA LUMPUR (May 24): The Association of Trust Companies Malaysia, together with Life Insurance Association of Malaysia, Malaysian Financial Planning Council and the Financial Planning Association of Malaysia, among others, will be bringing their grouses about certain cash trusts to DAP National Public Complaints Bureau chairman and member of parliament for Kepong, Lim Lip Eng, on Wednesday (May 25).
Their key gripes are centred on extremely high returns promised by these trusts and other outfits with similar modus operandi, which they suspect could be a Ponzi scheme. Some of these companies are said to offer returns of as high as 36% per annum.
In contrast, the fixed deposit rate of Malaysia’s largest bank by market capitalisation, Malayan Banking Bhd (Maybank), is 2.1% for a 12-month tenure, and 2.35% for five years. And in FY2021, Maybank paid out a whopping 58 sen per share in dividends, which, while considered very high, translates to a yield of 7%.
To the uninitiated, a Ponzi scheme — named after Charles Ponzi who operated such a fraudulent system in the 1920’s — is an investment where depositors are promised a very high rate of returns, with seemingly low or zero risks.
The money ploughed in by new depositors is then used to pay returns to the earlier investors. The entire exercise snowballs until it is no longer sustainable, and the trust company is wound up, and the depositors lose their money.
Some of the more famous Ponzi schemes of recent times…
