On Apr 29, 12:23 pm, HHimmler <kink...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> As personal wealth shoots the moon, Persian Gulf countries are
> jostling to become powerhouse international banking and investment
> giants.
>
> But recent missteps by financial wannabees in Abu Dhabi are lighting
> up "fraud monitors" in global capital markets, as the need for self-
> policing seems very much in need of improvement.
>
> ----------------------------
> "Fraud Cases May Complicate UAE Bid to Be Financial Center"
>
> "There's 'Room for More Oversight,' Abu Dhabi Official Says"
>
> By Will McSheehy and Arif Sharif
> Bloomberg News
> Tuesday, April 29, 2008; D05
>
> Dubai public prosecutors are investigating Deyaar Development, and Abu
> Dhabi is probing an alleged $109 million fraud. Both cases may hamper
> the United Arab Emirates' effort to become a global financial center.
>
> "The investment culture isn't deeply rooted in this region," Giyas
> Gokkent, head of research at National Bank of Abu Dhabi, said in a
> telephone interview yesterday. "There is plenty of room for more
> oversight."
>
> The UAE bought stakes in banks such as Citigroup and started tax-free
> business parks to attract foreign companies to vie with Qatar and
> Bahrain as the Persian Gulf region's biggest financial center. It has
> had to overcome Abu Dhabi's involvement in the collapsed Bank of
> Credit and Commerce International, a regulatory scandal at the Dubai
> International Financial Centre and findings that two of the Sept. 11,
> 2001, hijackers came from the Gulf state.
>
> Deyaar, Dubai's third-biggest publicly traded property company, is
> being investigated for possible fraud, Attorney General Essam al-
> Humaidan said yesterday. Authorities have arrested staff members and
> detained former chief executive Zack Shahin.
>
> Abu Dhabi police said they were investigating a suspect, identified by
> the initials A.A.G., in the alleged swindling of investors through an
> unlicensed investment company. A.A.G. and accomplices stole from 2,500
> investors after promising them returns of 30 percent a month, the
> police said yesterday.
>
> "People here have made money so fast on the property market it's made
> some think 40 percent a month is achievable," Nigel Sillitoe, Middle
> East head of the $14 billion Thames River Capital hedge fund group,
> said in a telephone interview from Dubai. "It just shows the investor
> education that's needed."
>
> UAE property values have quadrupled since foreigners were first
> allowed to buy homes in 2002, Dubai-based Al Mal Capital said in a
> report last month.
>
> The mobile phone of Shahin was switched off when Bloomberg called
> yesterday seeking comment. Shahin has been in jail for more than three
> weeks, Dubai's public prosecutor said.
>
> Abdulrahim al-Awadi, head of the UAE central bank's anti-money
> laundering and suspicious cases unit, declined to comment on the Abu
> Dhabi fraud case when contacted at his office yesterday. Saeed al-
> Hamez, director of the central bank's counterfraud department, could
> not be reached for comment on his cellphone.
>
> Personal wealth in the Middle East may rise to $2.2 trillion by 2011,
> from $1.4 trillion in 2006, as record oil prices fuel economic growth
> in the region, according to Merrill Lynch and Capgemini. The economies
> of Gulf oil exporters including the UAE and Saudi Arabia will probably
> grow by 6 percent this year, the International Monetary Fund has said.
>
> The forecasts have encouraged banks such as HSBC, Deutsche Bank and
> Goldman Sachs to open regional offices in the Dubai International
> Financial Centre, a 110-acre self-regulated park opened by the
> emirate's government in 2004. In June of that year, the DIFC fired
> regulators Phillip Thorpe and Ian Hay Davison after they questioned
> the way the center awarded land-development contracts.
>
> "Incidents like this will have an impact on foreign and local
> investors' attitudes to the UAE," Faisal Hasan, head of research for
> Global Investment House, Kuwait's biggest investment bank, said in a
> telephone interview yesterday. "It calls for increased corporate
> governance in the UAE capital markets."
>
> [Zainab Fattah, Tarek al-Issawi and Glen Carey in Dubai contributed to
> this report.]
>
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR200...
its just another unproductive wealth free market bubble waiting to
burst under its own weight of feverish speculation and fraud.
the world will decouple, but first the markets have to work their
magic and collapse. unregulated markets always do.
by the time the market players figure it out, its to late, the
collapse is set in stone.
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