A 30-year tax specialist has claimed offers of tax refunds for swindled David Ross investors, possibly worth about $20 million, are not as generous as they sound. Read More
Monthly Archives: December 2013
NZ Herald – Ponzi victims take another swipe at FMA
A Financial Markets Authority review – which said the regulator was recognised as being capable, credible and professional – has infuriated those caught up in David Ross’ Ponzi scheme, and called ‘self-serving’ by an investor group.
“To quote an investor ‘The FMA is not the sheriff riding into town to clean it up, they are the horse and cart that picks up the horse poop after the bad guys have robbed the town’,” the RAM group said. Read More
FMA Review Asks ‘Stakeholder’ Mates – Not Customers
In a bizarre move the Financial Markets Authority has done a review of itself, talking to the industry bodies it works with; but forgetting to talk to its customers (that’s us). The resulting report can be seen here. It is good self promotion by the FMA. We believe the report is an attempt by the FMA to do damage control and bolster its credibility in the wake of the RAM collapse. Our media release in response is here.
The FMA report does contain some very interesting comments, confirming there was widespread knowledge in the adviser industry of what Ross was up to.
“There were investment managers around town who lost clients to Ross Asset Management–they knew and should have raised a flag. The industry is relationships driven and having relationships within this community could have served to alert the FMA of Ross Asset Management” –Industry body stakeholder Page 26
“There are bigger fish to fry – there may be more Ross Asset Managements out there” –Private sector stakeholder Page 26
“Some stakeholders indicated that Ross Asset Management’s practices where known to many people in the advising industry and that if the FMA were networked at this level, they would have been informed informally, while others disputed this”. Page 26
“Ross Asset Management was commonly quoted as an example given the role of a lack of custodian independence in enabling his scheme to operate for so long” Page 38
For the record from May 2013 “Suggestions the Financial Markets Authority knew about David Ross long before his business was raided were “crap”, the regulator’s chief executive told a conference this morning. Read more here.
Arria shares
The only major instance found so far of David Ross potentially salting money away has been the accidental discovery of shares in Arria NLG Ltd in United Kingdom.
You can view a copy of the Arria company annual return here. We have posted it because we are asking you if the names or relationships of the New Zealand shareholders mean anything to you. Please have a look, and if anything jumps out please let me know. This may help us to find more hidden funds. Because a full forensic analysis has not yet been performed there is a likely hood that more ‘stash’ may have been hidden away.
The shareholding for the DRG Ross family trust can be seen at Shareholding 25, and a holding for a Jillian E Ross at Shareholding 96. Further background on the finding of the Arria money can be found here and here.
NZ Herald: Someone must have known Ross was a fraudster
It seems incredible that with nearly half a billion of non-existent funds under his control, no one suspected a thing. Bernie Madoff ran history’s biggest Ponzi scheme outside state-run pensions, losing $17.5 billion, dwarfing the efforts of local hero David Ross.
Madoff’s victims will get back at least $9.5b. Those who lost money to David Ross will get nothing. Why? Read More