Glenmorangie Single Malt Whiskey

He he .....my weapon ready for this CNY. One is 10years old and the other one is 12years old. Come savour with me.

Merry Christmas

Dear All ,

May your days be happy, heart be light & your Christmas be joyful and bright!!!!

MERRY CHRISTMAS.............

Arowana breeding from natural ponds.

Arowana all time favourites among fish enthusiasts. Getting very popular now with more ponds coming up. The adult size X-back could fetch up to RM12K a fish. Each fry from that spesies could fetch between RM1.2K - RM2K each. Each time 30-40 new hatchings. Wow 30 x RM1.2K = RM36K.

House of Hope and Pure Lotus

Its end of the year now, time for charitable work.

We managed to invite to two orphanages, 45 children, to Gurney Plaza to watch the POWER RANGER'S show.

We also managed to get Pallas to sponsor 50pairs of school shoes for the children.

A lot of thanks to PALLAS, GURNEY PLAZA and YB Chow.

Robert Madoff scandal.

Andrew Madoff
Robert Madoff

By ALEX BERENSON and DIANA B. HENRIQUES
Published: December 15, 2008
Federal investigators have found no evidence so far that members of Bernard L. Madoff’s family helped him carry out what may be the largest financial fraud in history, according to a person briefed on the case.
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Gino Domenico/Bloomberg News
Andrew Madoff held a senior position in the firm.
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Court Order Naming Trustee for Liquidation of Madoff Fund (pdf)
DealBook: More on the Madoff Scandal »
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Philoctetes Center, via Reuters
In an October 2007 video, Bernard L. Madoff spoke during a panel discussion on the future of the stock market at the Philoctetes Center, a nonprofit educational organization in New York.
Mr. Madoff’s sons, Andrew and Mark, and his brother, Peter, all occupied senior positions at his firm, Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, whose assets were frozen after Mr. Madoff told law enforcement agents on Thursday that he had defrauded investors of up to $50 billion.
Although the enormous scale of the fraud prompted widespread questions about whether one person could concoct all the necessary paperwork such a fraud would entail, Mr. Madoff, 70, had insisted that his family was not involved in the Ponzi scheme. He said it was “all his fault,” according to a criminal complaint filed last week.
And so far, investigators have not uncovered evidence that contradicts those statements, according to the person briefed on the case, who was not at liberty to comment publicly on it.
The person cautioned that the investigation was in its earliest stages, and examiners could still unearth evidence that Mr. Madoff’s family knew about the fraud or even helped carry it out.
But employees of the firm have said that Mr. Madoff’s sons and brother all seemed shocked on Thursday after the fraud was disclosed and Mr. Madoff was arrested. One of Mr. Madoff’s sons had a substantial amount of money invested in the accounts that Mr. Madoff managed, investigators said.
John R. Wing, known as Rusty, a lawyer for Peter Madoff, said on Monday that investigators had not advised Peter that he was a target in the case, and that he expected to cooperate with investigators.
Peter Madoff, 62, reported to work on Monday to help investigators and a court-appointed receiver take control of the firm’s assets and examine the firm’s books, Mr. Wing said.
“As far as I know, Peter Madoff has been 100 percent cooperative,” Mr. Wing said.
Peter Madoff was the firm’s general counsel, while Andrew, 42, and Mark Madoff, 44, supervised the firm’s stock-trading desks, which have so far not been implicated in the fraud. Both have worked at the firm since their 20s.
A person with direct knowledge of the information who was not authorized to speak for the sons said that Andrew Madoff and Mark Madoff had been told by law enforcement authorities that they were not targets in the case.
“They are considered to be fact witnesses only, neither subjects nor targets,” the source said. “They are cooperating totally.”
A lawyer for Frank DiPascali, another senior Madoff employee, declined to comment on whether his client is being investigated or cooperating with authorities.
Madoff employees have said that Mr. DiPascali was the most important figure in the separate staff that worked closely with Bernard Madoff on the 17th floor of the firm’s office at the Third Avenue building known as the Lipstick Tower in Midtown Manhattan. That operation also had its own computer systems, and did not process its trades through the Madoff firm, they said.
Bernard Madoff told his sons that the trading was being done through European counterparties, according to several people familiar with the history of the firm.
The firm’s stock traders and other support staff worked on the 18th and 19th floors, where they were supervised by Peter, Andrew and Mark Madoff.
The complaint filed last week states that Bernard Madoff told two unidentified senior employees on Dec. 10 that he had defrauded the firm’s investors. Those senior employees were Andrew and Mark Madoff, according to several people knowledgeable about the case who were not at liberty to discuss it publicly.
They then called a friend, Martin Flumenbaum, who is a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, those people said. After they told Mr. Flumenbaum about their father’s confession, he called federal prosecutors and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
On Thursday morning, Andrew and Mark Madoff met with federal authorities. The F.B.I. then sent two agents to their father’s apartment to interview him. He confessed and was arrested, according to documents filed in the case.
Since Thursday, Andrew and Mark have not been able to talk to their uncle or their father because they are considered witnesses in the case and must avoid pretrial discussions that might touch on their experiences.
One of Mr. Madoff’s sons had “a meaningful amount of money” invested with his father and got statements that were no different than those received by other investors, the people said. Andrew and Mark have told associates that their father’s confession suggested to them that the fraud had been going on for several years, one said.
Monday afternoon, a federal judge appointed a trustee to liquidate Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities, the broker-dealer that was the core of Mr. Madoff’s business. The trustee, Irving H. Picard, was appointed at the request of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the government-chartered fund set up to help protect investors of failed brokerage firms.
“It is clear that the customers of the Madoff firm need the protections available under federal law,” said Stephen P. Harbeck, the president of the corporation.
But in a statement, the agency warned that “the scope of the misappropriations and the state of the defunct firm’s records will make this more difficult than in most prior brokerage firm insolvencies.”
Normally the agency can simply transfer a failing firm’s customer accounts to a solvent brokerage house. That may not be possible in this case, Mr. Harbeck said. Moreover, since the agency does not know how much money is actually missing, it cannot determine how to apportion any customer assets that are recovered. The protections provided through the agency is available on its Web site,

SEC failed to act on 'credible Madoff tips.

WASHINGTON: US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chairman Christopher Cox said the agency failed to act for almost a decade on “credible and specific allegations” of wrongdoing by Bernard Madoff, who authorities say bilked investors of as much as US$50 billion (RM178.5 billion).
Allegations dating back until at least 1999 “were repeatedly brought to the attention of SEC staff, but were never recommended to the commission for action,” Cox, 56, said in a statement on Tuesday. He announced an internal probe to review the “deeply troubling” revelations.
“He’s revolted by what he found out, but it’s also in his interest to be revolted,” said James Cox, a securities law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, who isn’t related to the SEC chairman. “He’s taken a lot of heat over SEC enforcement.”
The SEC, already faulted in connection with the collapse of Bear Stearns Cos and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc, now faces criticism for failing to detect what Madoff termed “a giant Ponzi scheme”.
Senate Banking Committee chairman Christopher Dodd on Tuesday called on the agency to explain how the “massive fraud” went undetected. Madoff, 70, was arrested last Thursday after he allegedly told his sons that his eponymous firm, founded in 1960, was no more than “a giant Ponzi scheme”, the SEC said.
Instead of wielding subpoena power to obtain information, SEC staff “relied upon information voluntarily produced by Madoff and his firm,” Cox said.
The internal review will include “all staff contact and relationships with the Madoff family and firm”, he said, and mandate the recusal any SEC employee with more than an “insubstantial personal” contact with Madoff and his family.
Eric Swanson, a former assistant director of compliance and examinations at the SEC, is married to Madoff’s niece, Shana, who was a compliance lawyer at the Madoff firm. Swanson left the SEC in August 2006 and is now the general counsel of Bats Trading Inc, the third-largest US equity exchange by trading volume.
Bats defended Swanson.
“Eric Swanson worked at the SEC for 10 years and did not participate in any inquiry of Bernard Madoff Securities or its affiliates while involved in a relationship with Shana, whom he met through her trade association work in the industry,” Bats spokesman Randy Williams said in statement. “Throughout his career, Eric has displayed the highest ethical standards and his reputation has been, and continues to be, above reproach.”
Victims of Madoff’s fraud stretch from Tokyo to Paris, encompassing foundations set up by Boston philanthropist Carl Shapiro and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and clients of global banks such as Banco Santander SA of Spain, Nomura Holdings Inc of Japan and HSBC Holdings Plc of the UK. Yeshiva University in New York lost US$110 million, mostly through hedge funds controlled by trustee J Ezra Merkin.
Cox said a review of the SEC’s records so far has exposed “complicated steps that Madoff took to deceive investors, the public and regulators”. He said Madoff “kept several sets of books and false documents, and provided false information involving his adviser activities to investors and to regulators”.
The SEC was under fire before Madoff’s fraud came to light. The collapses of investment banks Bear Stearns and Lehman this year tarnished the SEC’s reputation and lawmakers such as Dodd and Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, have questioned its vigilance in enforcing securities laws. Cox, a Republican appointed by President George W Bush, has said he will leave office at the end of the Bush administration. His term officially ends in June 2009.
SEC Inspector-General H David Kotz released reports this year critical of the agency’s conduct. He said in one that the SEC “failed to carry out its oversight” of Bear Stearns, the New York investment bank that faced collapse in March. He’s also questioned the handling of investigations by the agency’s enforcement staff.
The SEC hadn’t inspected Madoff’s investment advisory business since he registered the firm with the agency in September 2006, two people familiar with the matter said. The SEC tries to inspect advisers at least every five years and to scrutinise new firms in their first year of registration, former agency officials and securities lawyers said.
SEC examiners reviewed Madoff’s brokerage business in 2005 after an investment manager, writing to the agency, and press reports questioned the validity of his investment returns. The SEC’s enforcement division completed an investigation involving the company last year without bringing a claim.
— Bloomberg