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28-Year-Old Businessman Accused of Stealing $1 Billion From Moldova
An anonymous reader writes: You could be excused for not knowing much about Moldova — the small, Eastern European country has a population of around 3 million and occupies about 13,000 square miles of territory. Its GDP is just over $6 billion — which makes accusations that 28-year-old Ilan Shor stole close to a billion dollars from the country's banks quite interesting. A recent report (PDF) says Shor led a group that bought controlling stakes in three Moldovan banks and then passed transactions between them to increase their liquidity. The banks then issued massive loans to companies owned or related to Shor. $767 million disappeared from the banks, and the country's central bank thinks that total will rise to $1 billion. It was forced to bail out the banks to keep the economy from crashing. Widespread corruption led to many records of Shor's actions being "lost" or outright deleted. He's now charged and placed under house arrest while the investigation continues.
that great a place for software development facilities anymore.
You can't just do this without insider help. And by insiders, I mean government officials.
Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Are you sure Frank or Marvin did not do this for the CIA?
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Most Europeans that don't live in countries near Moldova know it for its wine. I've actually been there (though only for about 3 days) and it is quite a poor country too by European standards. I imagine this is going to hit the Moldovan people pretty hard.
He did the same thing bankers do in the rest of the world, only he didn't pay off the right people? Lesson learned.
As far as Eastern European country bank heists go, this guy is an amateur. The way professionals do it is by first controlling the government and the media. Then you steal the money (say some 7-8 billion) by funneling them through a chain of hollow companies to offshore accounts. Finally you set one of your partners with whom you have unsettled depth as the fall guy, while you yourself use your political connection to become the head of the local equivalent of the FBI:
Bulgaria's CorpBank: A Tangled Web Of Fraud
I had remembered that there was a small, Eastern European country that has a population of around 3 million and occupies about 13,000 square miles of territory. But I couldn't remember its name up until now - only that it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy.
GS would love to hire this guy.
So what I am curious about, is what they did actually illegal, or is it a case of private currency manipulation? There have been a few historical cases where rich individuals or companies were able to go into poor countries and warp their economy before crashing or gutting them.
When your GDP is lower than some individual's incomes, some interesting but bad things can happen.
So why did he stick around? If I had $1b in the bank, had covered my tracks, I certainly wouldn't stick around?
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
You steal $1000 dollars and the police look for you. You steal $100,000 and the FBI looks for you. You steal $10,000,000 and the banks hire you. You steal $1,000,000,000 and the lawyers get you off on a technicality.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
And in unrelated news Jon Corzine hired a new 28 year old assistant with banking experience in Moldova...
Freaking Moldova can put a banker in jail, why can't we?
"There are lies, there are damn lies, and there are statistics"
"Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You are welcome on my lawn.
It is immaterial to the perpetrator of the fleecing here whether the government bails out the banks or not. The perpetrator has already taken the money via having it loaned, so whether the bank goes bankrupt or not doesn't matter to them, but it does matter to the government.
Banks are in an interesting position since they have control over assets that can far exceed the bank's actual value. Of course, legally the bank cannot just take these assets since they are storing deposits on behalf of customers, but they can lend out this money (minus a % they have to keep in hand at all times per regulation).
So a scheme could work like so:
- Buy a controlling interest in a bank, one where the purchase cost is a small fraction of the deposits the bank manages.
- Make transactions (selling debt, taking loans, etc) to allow the bank to have as much cash on hand as possible.
- Lend out all of this cash to companies you control, with no collateral on the loans.
- Have those companies pay the money to other companies you control for services etc.
- The first set of companies now all default on their loans, and there is no collateral to pursue.
- Bank goes bankrupt (or gets bailed out), doesn't matter to you either way.
- Roll around in your money, which is now off-shore so it can't be seized.
"Procedure for stealing $1B from a small country"
This is probably not the Shor's Algorithm you are looking for.
--
Captcha: Plunders
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Sounds like Elbonian banking.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I think that would be just to hillary your hard drive, not rehillary it. It may take on a life like Robert Bork (i.e. to be borked).
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Things must be pretty pathetic, if you must bring up Iran-Contras affair to defend a 21st-century Democratic politician. But, yes, those lost e-mails really are not like that. Whatever you might think of Lt-Colonel Norton and that entire things, that business was not for personal gain.
Losing would've been. But it was deliberate destruction of records. And lying to Congress.
Duude, you are talking to a Ukrainian expat :-)
If the said pounding really was, what Clinton and Lerner were "facing", I would've been content — and fighting to stop the sexual abuse of inmates. But one of the women retired with full pension, and the other one is fixing to become President — with 46% of the nation retaining "favourable" opinion of her... Maybe, Americans ought to learn, what "Maidan" has come to mean too...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So now wiping a hard drive is a Hillary? I'm not up to date on this, when did they send out the memo?
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
...wait until Victor Von Doom finds out what he did.
that's what the dynastic families that control the Western banking cartel and Wall Street do
$16 billion USD was flown into Iraq by the USM after the start of the 2003 war ... and ... it's gone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nVk25ZvTkU
This, 100x. They're not bailing out "the bank" or the bank's owners. They're bailing out the people who were doing business with the bank who thought it was a bank and not a scam to steal all of the assets the bank was managing. If they can't get the money back from the people who stole it (and it looks like that's pretty unlikely), those people are in a world of hurt without some intervention.
In either case, boiling the perpetrators in oil is probably a good next step. Not doing that is where we tend to go wrong.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Hmm. This guy just grabbed 1/6 of Moldova. Transnistrina, a rebellious province of Moldova that Moldova technically owns but can't govern, is about 1/6 of the country. So rather than prosecuting him, Moldova could just give him Transnistrina in exchange for the $1 billion and wish him good luck with that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
So now wiping a hard drive is a Hillary? I'm not up to date on this, when did they send out the memo?
I'm sorry, that information has been Hillaried.
At least he won't have trouble with paying for all of the legal fees he's about to incur :)
640k ought to be enough for anyone.
But, yes, those lost e-mails really are not like that.
Dude, people lose/delete e-mail by accident ALL THE TIME, no conspiracy or ulterior motives involved. It's one of those things that can happen to anyone.
Whatever you might think of Lt-Colonel Norton
His NAME is North.
that business was not for personal gain.
Not directly, but doing what your bosses want can be percieved as personal gain. And destroying evidence, which he did, was most certainly for personal gain. And he has certainly turned his criminal and treasonous acts into a career as a right-wing pundit...for personal gain.
And you may not realize this but Breitbart is not an unbiased source. Neither is IJReview, it's not "Independent" if it's founded and run by Republicans and has Republican biases.
Duude, you are talking to a Ukrainian expat :-)
Then you might want to listen more and spout off less about American politics, tovarysh.
just because you moved to the US (probably to make more money than you could back in the batÊkivshchyna) doesn't mean you have to turn into an Ayn Rand (whose real name is Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum) clone. What is it with ex-russians/ukrainians turning into selfish-asshole right-wing/libertarian zealots once they emigrate. Even Yakov Smirnoff has a bit of that.
I forget, so please refresh my memory, are liberals for government control of the banks or are they for bank control of the government?
(I'm pretty sure I'm against either)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I've been to Moldova and can't believe there exists a Billion anywhere in that country. However a lot of human trafficking does happen through there.
I thought it was the Uzbeks that boiled them, not the Moldavians.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Are you disputing a single fact stated on the page I linked to? No, you do not. Your attempt at rebuttal is therefor null and void and without any merit whatsoever.
Should I ever suddenly develop a need for your opinion on what I should be doing, I'll pump it out of your asshole, asshole. With a broomstick. But nice to see an Illiberal's real attitude towards immigrants, anyway. Thank you for this moment of clarity.
Well, now, since you turned this polite conversation to be entirely about me rather than corruption of public officials in countries rich and poor, here it goes...
We aren't turning "libertarian" — we moved here, because we always were. And we are disappointed. Disappointed, that the free country we were expecting to find here, is not as free as the USSR propaganda was claiming. That the Collectivism, of which we had our fill growing up, is alive and well here and that various jerk-offs like yourself prove their unselfishness by voting to force others to pay for their favourite causes.
How could you defend Hillary Clinton's life-long history of corruption ("cattle futures" rings a bell? moo!..) by calling her critic a "selfish-asshole" is beyond me. Is this supposed to convince anyone, that she is a fine lady, or something? Oh, well, I suppose, you'll understand, if I never reply to you, again, asshole.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It happened in Western Europe in older times, precisely for people that messed with money. You don't mess with coins with a king's face on it else said king will get very pissed at you.
You would have to be someone pretty important to get boiled in oil, though. Oil is very expensive and it is a big waste to use it for torture or as a weapon.
Oil is very expensive and it is a big waste to use it for torture or as a weapon.
Vegetable oils are cheap, plentiful, and appear to work quite well on chicken legs and potato wedges.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
The fact that you turn vicious as soon as someone disputes what you say speaks volumes.
Do us both a favour and don't ever reply to me again, either.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I mean in pre-modern times, where I believe it to be very valuable.
Even today it is not that cheap to the average African, as it has to be priced at least as much as diesel fuel.
While the idea of throwing boiling oil on people who assault your castle is popular, they rather used pitch http://theurbanabo.com/urban_h...
If I were an evil overlord I would certainly consider throwing political enemies in a frying pan, watching while having dinner.
And we are disappointed.
They had you thinking it was all blackjack and hookers,eh? You should've moved to Vegas and become a pit boss.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You clearly don't like the USA, so get out. Move to Hong Kong or Singapore. http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking
Most of the woodcuts depicting the act showed a large cauldron with the boilee inside, surrounded by flames. Presumably the boilers used water.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!