AGRICULTURE-related interest schemes have been getting bad publicity as media reports of possible scams perpetrated on investors in such schemes emerged. It has not helped that a number of such schemes have failed.
An investor in a plantation of rare trees used in the making of incense and perfumes tells The Edge that he had invested more than RM100,000 in the project by buying a couple of hundred of these trees in a Southeast Asian country in 2012. He had attended a talk by the promoters in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur after being approached on social media.
According to the police report he had made, he was promised guaranteed returns of more than 100% by the seventh year. In the years after he made the investment, however, the investor did not receive any news about the trees. By the seventh year, when his trees would have matured, the investor reached out to the marketing agent and was told that most of his trees had to be replanted because of bad weather.
He never saw any of the promised returns.
Investors in an oil palm plantation scheme in Kelantan may be considered a little luckier.
Investors in the Golden Palm Growers Scheme (GPGS) managed to get a court order to have the scheme wound up in 2019. Lim Peng Keo of Deloitte Corporate Solutions Sdn Bhd was appointed as liquidator.
When contacted, Khoo Siew Kiat, restructuring services leader of Deloitte Malaysia, says the scheme’s asset comprising 4,565ha of plantation land in Gua Musang, Kelantan, is still available…
