Botswana a hotbed of international fraudsters-Part II
In this two part series Mmegi correspondent Alexander von Paleske tracks the underhand dealings of international fraudsters. In this second part he looks at the story of the infamous fraudster Rakesh Saxena and his friends
In 2001 Rakesh Saxena's friend and fellow fraudster Adnan Khashoggi, via his Bahamas-based company Ultimate Holdings allegedly pumped up the stock of a Nasdaq bubble company, Genesis Intermedia, in which Ultimate Holdings was a majority shareholder.
The company was built around a book by a John Gray, "Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars".
Involved in that scam were Deutsche Bank in Toronto and a slew of criminal stockbrokers. After the scam collapsed in 2001, while Khashoggi and his friend El Batrawi were 130 million US Dollar richer in their wake, broker houses filed for bankruptcy and 200 employees lost their jobs. The damage amounted to more than 300 million US Dollars.
Deutsche Bank, the biggest German bank has now settled out of court and last year paid 350 millions US Dollar, cash, while still denying any responsibility for the disaster.
Meanwhile Saxena in Canada was busy. He appointed the leading opposition MP in the Canadian Parliament, John Reynolds as board member in a flimsy company called WaveTech while fighting extradition to Thailand at the same time. Corruption perhaps, otherwise why else would he suddenly enlist an MP in his company while appealing for government help in overturning the extradition order?
Saxena was involved in a scandal around a company in South Africa in 2004, called Platinum Asset Management. PAM later moved to Botswana after SA government authorities started investigating it.
However shared success is double success, so Saxena went to good old Europe in 2000 with his friend Khashoggi. They linked up with a Filipino named Amador Pastrana.
Pastrana had already earned himself the reputation as being king of the boiler rooms earning him more than a billion Dollars.
Boiler rooms are cramped small offices, from where the selling of shares to unsuspecting clients is organized. They apply high-pressure sales pitches on their victims.
Their usual victims are those people who have money but no banking experience. They are neither banker nor broker.
The shares they sell to pensioners, and medium income earners are worthless, artificially pumped up Penny stocks and the clients never see their money again.
Saxena, Khashoggi and Pastrana bought together the WMP Bank AG in Vienna, Austria renamed it General Commerce Bank and turned it into a boiler room. The fraud would involve, in value, roughly one billion US Dollars.
Their partners in crime were the US convicted fraudsters Regis Possino, Raoul Berthaumieu and Sherman Mazur. In 2001 the Bank was closed. They had made 1 billion in one year.
Last year I got a visit by two high ranking members of the Botswana Police at Marina Hospital where I work.
They were sent by a top police officer to get information about how the international network of boiler room gangsters work.
I brought them in contact with the Financial Services Board of South Africa. I also gave them the material of my investigations.
Perhaps this marks the end of Botswana being a favourite destination for international fraudsters.
Photograph: Financial fraudster Rakesh Saxena
Courtesy of www.nriinternet.com
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