Russia's IFR

The Central Bank of Russia announced that its IFR was now USD 138.9 billion compared with its position a week ago which was USD 138.6 billion. The increase is attributable to the increase in oil revenues caused by the increase in oil price which today is USD 58/= a barrel. Russia can easily wipe out its debt of USD 138 billion in one go. Malaysia's IFR should be about USD 74 billion now.

This sounds like an April Fool's ...

A professor in Aberdeen, Scotland claims that he can develop a pill that can increase a person's life span by 30 years. He based the development of the pill on biochemical experiments on mice that have less thyroxine and those that have more thyroxine. The group with the more thyroxines tend to be long lived. By comparing the life span of the two mouse groups and equating the long-lived group to that of a man, the gain in life span in equivalent to 30 years.

Financial scandal ...

The article in Sunday Times on Ahmad Nordin, the then Auditor-General of Malaysia, brings back a lot of memories and shame to that group called Bumiputra. Sometime in mid 1982, Malaysia was rocked by a financial scandal of unprecedented magnitude. Apparently, BMF, a division of Bank Bumiputra, one of the biggest banks in the country, had RM 2.5 billion of its money owed by a Hong Kong property group called Carrian owned by a tycoon named George Tan. At that time, Mahadhir had just become the Prime Minister and the incumbent Finance Minister was Tengku Razaleigh.

RM 2.5 billion then was a lot of money even by today's standards. At that time, there was no such thing as a billionaire in Malaysia, not even anywhere else in the world. Bill Gates was still fiddling with Microsoft and RM 2.15 then was equivalent to USD 1.00. Lets see how much is RM 2.5 billion in 1982 worth now when extrapolated to 2005 when it takes RM 3.80 to purchase a single US dollar.

What if the above money (converted to USD) was kept somewhere to accumulate at the rate of say 7.00 % interest rate compounded yearly for 15 years to July 1997, the amount would have become RM 6.8976 billion. At the 1998 exchange rate, this would turn into RM 12.1911 billion. By 2005, this would in turn appreciate to RM 16.6844 billion which had gone down the drain. They should have given it to me because I certainly know how to manage the fund.

The individuals responsible for giving the unauthorised loans to Carrian were Lorraine Esme (what a funny Malay name) Osman, Hashim Shamsuddin and Rais Saniman. Others implicated were Senator Kamarul Ariffin (who had resigned as Bank Bumiputra Chairman in March 1982) and Ibrahim Jaafar. Other names were Nawawi Mat Amin, Henry Chan and Eric Chow. Lorraine received RM2.5 million in 1981 and USD 12.0 million in 1982 as consultancy fees from Carrian while others got lesser amounts, although the exact amount received by those involved might never be known.I wonder what has happened to them now.

The lesson derived from the BMF scandal was that can the Malays really do busines ? Because of a few greedy people, the whole Bumuputra community was labelled thus !