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PC Cooling Specialist Zalman Goes Bankrupt Due To Fraud

An anonymous reader writes Zalman's parent company Moneual's CEO Harold Park, and vice presidents Scott Park and Won Duck-yeok, have apparently spent the last five years producing fraudulent documentation relating to the sales performance of Zalman. These documents inflated sales figures and export data for Zalman's products. The reason? Bank loans. By increasing sales and exports Park and his associates were able to secure bank loans totaling $2.98 billion. Someone has finally realized what has been going on, though, triggering Zalman's shares to be suspended on the stock market and the company filing for bankruptcy protection. The questions now turn to how this practice was allowed to continue unnoticed for so long and how the banks will go about getting their near $3 billion back.

6 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Just by Luckyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except that, of course, in modern capitalism banks are too big to fail and take these risks because they know it's not their own money that's at stake, but that of tax payers.

    But well obfuscated.

  2. Re:socialism by Savage-Rabbit · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'll take free market capitalism over socialsim/communism ANY DAY!
    At least in a democratic form, you have the ability to do better.
    Under socialism, there is no reward, for doing better, and you become
    LAZY, quality of work, goods & services suck.

    You mean a free market capitalist democracy where wealth steadily gathers into the hands of an elite clique of super wealthy individuals with the result that the free market capitalist democracy inevitably evolves into a plutocracy where the clique of hereditary plutocrats (aka. the 1%) step on anybody who seeks to rise by his own merit while the underclasses become steadily impoverished. This is usually followed by a revolution of the underclasses and the free market capitalist democracy is replaced by some form of more socialist order with many of the shortcomings you mentioned. Lather, rinse and repeat at nauseam.

    --
    Only to idiots, are orders laws.
    -- Henning von Tresckow
  3. Re: Just by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does capitalism depend on people being truthful all the time? Somehow I don't see that working. I thought the robustness of capitalism came from relying on everybody to be selfish bastards.

    That depends on what you mean by 'capitalism'(many people who use the term do mean something, though often not the same thing, so it's pretty rhetorically slippery).

    Typically, when people say 'capitalism', they are implying 'free market' and implicitly or explicitly extolling the virtues of 'economic equilibrium'. This is where truthfulness becomes a direct requirement. The idealized model of a free market equilibrium requires rational actors, perfect information, absence of market power, and the like. Lying is about as aggressively contrary to perfect information as you can get, since it's usually a calculated attempt to ensure even more asymmetric information in the liar's favor. And the demonstrations of asymmetric information leading to market failure(both historical case studies and in theoretical models) are numerous.

    So, while any real-world implementation can't rely on people to be honest, or even assume that the cheats will be caught all the time; there are good reasons to suspect that dishonesty imposes both direct costs on the victims of fraud and an overall drag on the market efficiency, so there is a strong incentive to punish, and attempt to minimize, dishonesty and fraud.

  4. Re:Just by wonkavader · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No. You're right that if you end up in jail, you did it wrong. But if you end up bankrupt, well, that's normal and shows you're good at taking risks. Lots of entrepreneurs wind up going through several bankruptcies. When they do the bankruptcy right, they still come out rich, and have something else already lined up. I know this sounds insane, but it's really quite normal. Fiscal responsibility, the kind we normal wage earners have to maintain, is a sign of not taking risks. It's a negative attribute, as far as the VCs are concerned. (Until it's their money being lost.)

  5. Re: Just by Anon-Admin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So by your definition if I break into a house and steal everything, then sell it at my store... Thats Capitalism.

    Sorry, you are wrong. What they have done is not capitalism, it is fraud and IMO Theft.

  6. Re: Just by operagost · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The real question is, how much are you charging for that straw man, there?

    --

    Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.