Singapore
Correspondent

Edited by James M. Kelly

Miss Singapore in Credit Card Scam

Ris Low was convicted for having used credit cards, obtained illegally and was sentenced to two years of probation for it. This incident has created a sense of anxiety amongst some beauty pageant organizers who told ‘Channel news Asia’ that contestants must be free of criminal records.

Ris Low was already a subject of discussion on the cyberspace due to her inability to speak fluent English and now mixed reactions from the people of Singapore are coming into view. Though some Singaporeans feel that a criminal act reflects badly on the personality of a person, who is going to represent her country & should not be allowed to do so, a whole lot others feel that even criminally convicted people should be given a second chance.

Ris Low is to represent Singapore in the upcoming ‘Miss World’ pageant slated to be held in Johannesburg later this year and already, there are a whole lot of speculations coming up, on whether the crown will be taken away from Miss Singapore or will she still be given a second chance and allowed to participate in the pageant.

Both, ERM world, the organizers of the Miss Singapore world pageant & Ris Low have not commented on the issue. Some people are also of the opinion that ERM organizers ought to be sacked for not doing a proper background check and it would be an embarrassment to send someone with a criminal record to represent the country.

Whether Ris Low will be seen in the Miss World pageant this year or not still remains unclear as a court decision on this is still awaited.

Written by: Amber Butler-Davis

Edited by: James M. Kelly
A new security report has released that they believe that extremist groups in Southeast Asia are using the Internet and social networking to rebel the youth of the region.

Since 2000, Internet usage in Southeast Asia has exploded and extremist groups have developed a sophisticated online presence, including professional media units.

The report, which was conducted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, found evidence of extremist groups in the Asian region and that the Internet has become an increasingly important tool for recruitment to violence.

The report titled “Countering internet radicalisation in Southeast Asia” explained how the groups are not only attacking the West, but are drawing on their narrative to attack the governance arrangements of regional states.

The report also mentioned how online extremism first appeared in Southeast Asia in early 2000, particularly in the Bahasa Indonesia and Malay language cyber-environment.

Since then the regions Internet usage has greatly increased and so too have extremist websites, chat rooms and blogs.

The number of radical and extremist websites in Bahasa and Malay rose from 15 in 2007 to 117 in 2008.

Of those, sympathetic websites rose from 10 to 16 and sympathetic blogs and social networking rose from zero to 82.

Radical regional websites have spread through al-Qaeda and Southeast Asian militant group Jemaah Islamiah propaganda videos, pictures and statements between 2006 and July 2007.

In Indonesia, where they believe extremist Muslim groups are responsible for bombings, the usage of the Internet rose from two million in 2000 to 20 million in January 2008.

The report states that the country now represents 80 to 90 percent of visitors to 10 radical and extremist websites in the region.

Also in the Philippines, Internet usage has increased to now a total of 14 million users which is very different from only two million in 2000.

Malaysia is now up to 14.9 million from 3.7 million and Thailand records that they have 8.5 million users from 2.3 million in the same period.

It was in August 2007 when one of the first appearances of a “tradecraft manual” was in the then forum, Jihad al-Firdaus. The forum had a section on electronic jihad, including several hacking manuals.

But it was said that there had been no serious attempt to plan militant operations in these forums, adding that any further details of their activities were being passed through in private messages or personal emails.

Extremists were using a variety of technology to spread their message.

The report also mentions how blogs and personal social networking accounts provided more than half of the increase in 2008.

Militant groups have also become Internet media savvy.

The Mujahidin Syura Council, a southern Thailand extremist group launched an official media wing in July 2008 as a blog on Google.

Another group, Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia, also often produces high-quality videos of its activities and uploads them regularly onto YouTube.

Many of the videos can be seen focusing on the failings of the Indonesian government and the need to implement sharia law and establish an Islamic caliphate.

The report stated “Extremist groups without access to mainstream media place great value on having online media units to boost their reputations and recruit people via the internet.”

The report also explained how the groups had no problems using the Internet and media outlets because the regional governments have done so little to stop the rise of online radicalisation, mainly because attempts to regulate cyberspace have been a political minefield.

It said while websites inciting violence are subject to criminal laws in some countries, there are often no specific regulations covering the Internet.

Written by:
Amber Butler-Davis

Edited by: James M. Kelly
On February 20, Chinese lawyers filed a motion to a French court seeking the command to stop the auction house Christie’s putting two bronze relics from China under the hammer.

Liu Yang, head of a group of almost 90 lawyers, explained how the application was submitted to a Paris court Thursday night, four days before the auction was scheduled to be held on February 23 to 25 in Paris.

Bernard Gomez, the president of the Association for the Protection of Chinese Art in Europe (APACE), agreed to be the applicant for property preservation of the two bronze rabbit and rat head sculptures.

The Qing Dynasty relics were in the imperial summer resort Yuanmingyuan. They were taken from the palace when it was burnt down by Anglo-French allied forces during the Second Opium War in 1860.

The items currently belong to the Yves Saint Laurent Foundation and were put up for auction by the late fashion magnate’s partner, Pierre Berge.

Liu explains that if the court motion happens to fail, they will participate in the auction and decide what to do next when the moment occurs.

The lawyers did write a letter to Christie’s last week asking to stop the sale of the two precious Chinese items, and also explaining that they would be prepared to sue Pierre Berge if Christie’s puts the bronzes up for auction. But Christie’s said the auction will proceed as scheduled.

Chen Yan, Christie’s public relations officer in China, stated that the proceeds from all items in the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Berge collection will be going to charity.

Chen also mentioned how the owners did provide legal documents which confirmed their legal possession of all the articles, including the two bronze sculptures.

The Chinese relics are expected to sell for 8 to 10 million euros each.

Liu said the Global Aixinjueluo Family Clan, a civil society registered in Hong Kong, has agreed to be the plaintiff. Aixinjueluo is the clan name of the emperors of the Qing Dynasty.

A statement of the administration of the old Summer Palace explained how the relics are to be returned to China. China has received full ownership to these relics.

Written by:
Amber Butler-Davis

Edited by: James M. Kelly
Will history repeat itself?
Then
In the eighties, a Malaysian beauty queen had pictures of her taken while she was nude by her boyfriend. Unfortunately the relationship went sour and in a fit of spite the boyfriend sent those photos to a number of different newspapers.

Thankfully at least one newspaper editor got rid of the revealing pictures. But however others did not. One of the paper’s editors did confront the father of the beauty queen with the pictures and illustrated the sequence of events through cartoons because the actual pictures could not be used. It was too ugly and too distasteful for a father to see their daughter like that.

In a result of this, the beauty queen had to step down from her position and the overall result of the entire sad, sorry episode was that the boyfriend had in fact got his revenge. He was never brought to account for his actions.

The boyfriend had successfully got his own back on the girl, with help from the press whose only motives were to increase their readership. The newspaper which broke the story did not even mention the boyfriend name, which had quite obviously caused a great deal of hurt and agony to the beauty queen by blatantly violating her personal privacy.

Now
Elizabeth Wong, Selangor state executive councillor and assemblywoman is in a similar situation now. In her case, the pictures are believed to have been taken by a former boyfriend without her consent.

The person who released the photos to selected media venues has achieved his objective, whatever his motives were for doing so. Wong has been embarrassed and harassed by the public and she has finally offered to step down from her position as both executive councillor and assemblywoman.

The Papers
There is always a problem for the papers whenever a thing such as privacy violation happens. If it is purely a personal matter with no repercussions on others, are the papers to keep these things out of the press and away from the public eye, but how can we be sure that it won’t appear somewhere on the internet.

Sadly, once the news is released there is no point blaming and bad mouthing the newspapers. The public has a desired instinct to know about celebrity gossip and their faults. The papers are merely competing with readers and if one paper runs a story and the other does not, they run the risk of losing their consumers.

The papers have an obligation to report what happens after an event and how the certain public figure responds and acts to the unfolding event which may have caused them stress. They must also include the reactions of those around the person in the situation.

Despite everything we say about the right to privacy and our public position that Wong did no wrong, it would still be hypocritical if those concerned still insisted that she pay the price with her resignation.

Let’s look at the facts and admit that for the vast majority of us human beings, there are boyfriends, girlfriends, partners and intimate moments that are private.

However, if a partner does choose to violate that privacy for any reason, the other party can not possibly be blamed. The blame must lie with the person who broke the trust in the first place. As human beings in a society where the above rule is believed, Wong’s resignation should then be rejected. We would all be hypocrites if we hold her responsible for being a trust worthy person.

No matter which way the story turns out, the person who took and then gave the pictures to the media must be questioned. And for both cases, it does not take a genius to figure out who those people were.

In the eighties, the beauty queen’s boyfriend got off scot-free for perpetrating what was essentially a sordid crime. Let’s just hope that history does not repeat itself again in 2009.

Not Always a Legitimate Fundraiser.

(Written by: Amber Butler-Davis)
(Edited by: James Kelly)

On January 30, Shanghai No 1 Intermediate People’s Court was told how 165 people had lost a total of 160 million Yuan over the past 10 years from a gang of alleged swindlers who managed to raise 850 million Yuan illegally.

Even though the prime suspect has still not been located, five others accused of being involved stood trial and they all claimed that they were unaware of the fraud.

One of the accused, Fu Xiuchun, 56, explained to the courtroom how her brother in law, Chen Lihan, had told her about a taxi company he had invested in and was making good money from it in 1997.

Fu bought over 120 taxis in the past 10 years from Chen, and directly from the prime suspect Zou Peijie. Every month she received roughly 8,000 Yuan for each taxi she had purchased.

It had never occurred to her that she was in the middle of a fraud until Chen told her in January 2008 that Zou had fled and could not be found.

The first defendant, Chen Lihan, 68, explained how Zou’s daughter was a student in his own daughters class, this is how they meet and came friends. Chen continued on by explaining how Zou had said she worked for a travel agent under Shanghai Qiangsheng Group and how she told him that he could make 8,000 Yuan a month if he invested 80,000 Yuan in her company.

Chen was reluctant so only started with an investment of 40,000 Yuan, he told the court. By the end of 2007, Chen had purchased over 170 taxis from Zou and explained the scheme to his friends and family.

Xia Hengzen, 56, one of the suspects, explained how she had made over 200,000 Yuan from her investment. Where as Fu made a profit of over 1 million Yuan which helped her buy her house.

The fourth defendant, Li Zhengfang, managed to buy six properties and two cars with the money he made after investing in Zou’s company.

In the last decade, more than 850 million Yuan was collected through the scheme.

Chen alone had collected a total of 796 million Yuan from 119 investors but he was unable to pay back 139 million yaun to 55 of them. Every investor never received the taxis they had paid for.

Chen told the court how he gave all the money to Zou, who has allegedly fled to the US in December 2007 and can still not be found.

A lawyer and a member of the financial study development of Shanghai Bar Association, Sou Jianguo explained how illegal fund-raising always promised people high returns and sadly people get greedy and they invest blindly.

Jianguo continued by saying how it is hard for small to medium sized companies when it comes to receiving a loan from the bank.

Statistics from the People’s Bank of China show that there is close to 950 million Yuan worth of black money circulating the country, which is not deposited into banks.

Suo said that if China is asking the people to start their own business, with an aim to create more jobs for the increasing number of university graduates and the laid off professionals due to the global financial crisis, then rules that regard bank loans need to be more flexible.

The Public security bureau and the central bank occasionally launch a crackdown on illegal fund-raising once in a while, but this can not be a permanent solution to the problem, Suo expressed.

Amber Butler-Davis
Staff Reporter – ReportingAsia.com

Exam Answers leaked before examination

The Shaghai Daily reported on the 28th of October that answers to some exams have been leaked and are available for purchase. The Beijing Education Examination Authority confirmed that the exam papers for national tests in civil law, corporate law, legal instruments, civil procedure and environmental law have al been leaked somehow. The Ministry of Education has now begun an investigation to find out how the exam papers have been leaked. However, the authority of the Beijing education examination told the Shanghai Daily that it is hard to tell if a second examination should be set until the investigation is completely finished.
A lawyer with a surname Liu, who teaches Law in a non-governmental university and his student Wang Ming reported the leak. Liu explained to authorities how he bought the answers to seven examinations for the sum of 150 yuan (US$21.90) from a man called Zheng Xin after being introduced to him by his students. The two men then went to the authorities with the evidence along with mobile phone messages and recordings. Liu checked the exam papers and found that the answers to the five tests he had bought from Zheng were in fact correct. Liu commented that Zheng had been particualry cautious throughout the whole process but finally agreed to sell the answers to friends of the acquaintances. Also, it was told that they never did the deals in public and that they money was always passed through and paid to a middleman in the operation.
Wang told the Shanghai Daily that the leaked answers had started to appear about a week ago and that the price to buy all seven examinations was only about 100 yuan. Wang said that some of his classmates got the answers from their teachers or classmates.
Liu and Wang had found answers to several exams in April being leaked and they reported this to the Beijing authorities in May but because they had no hard evidence, no investigation was put into place.
The Beijing examination authorities told the Shanghai Daily that they had checked all the examination areas as well was the printing and transport facilities across the country and no problem was found in any of these places. The Newspaper quoted an authority official saying “There are cameras everywhere during the exams and since it’s a national exam held across the country, we can do very little if the source of the leak is outside Beijing,”

Hong Kong Bureau

10 on trial for Pyramid Scheme

Apparently, money does grow on trees. The Xinhua News Agency reported Tuesday that ten people accused of running a pyramid scheme have gone to trial at the Baotou intermediate people’s court in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.

The trails began Monday for the defendants, and they are beng charged with conning over 30,000 people out of 1.28 billion yaun ($187million) by selling them overpriced sections of forestry land.

Defendant, Chen Xianggui told the court that he set up the Liaoning 1,000 Miles Forestation Co in August 2002. And that over the next five years he had managed to establish more that 100 different branches in 12 separate provinces across the country. Lui Yanging, also a co-defendant was employed as the company’s general manager.

The company was in full swing having nearly 9,000 salespersons employed to sell unmeasured expanses of land at 26, 600 yaun a piece to unsuspecting investors. The buyers were told that the value of their land was expected to rise to the value of 180,000 yaun within the next eight years. The company also promised the buyers that they would pay back 44 percent of the initial investment every year. However, when the payments promised failed to be given to the buyers, the investors became suspicious and several buyers reported the company to the authorities.

During investigations, the police were able to uncover more that 40 similar schemes that were all being run by the same company and immediately stepped in to shut down and suspend the company’s operation.

The Inner Mongolia autonomous regional government launched a two-month investigation in July to discover the legitimacy of the company’s claims. The investigation found that even though the woodland did exist it could never have yielded the dividends that was offered by the Liaoning firm because of the woodlands such poor location.

Lui, Chen and another eight associates that remain unnamed were subsequently charged with violations of national law.

A spokesman for the investigators told Xinhua on Tuesday that the Inner Mongolian government will “do its best” to minimize the investors’ losses. Once a verdict in the case has been reached, then full details of how and what repayments might be made to those who lost money form the scheme will be announced. However, the defense lawyer, who wishes to remain unnamed, is not expecting a verdict anytime soon even though the trial is now underway.

Reporting Asia Uncovers Merchants of Misery.

Hidden in the back of newspapers, magazines and blogs in Hong Kong, China, Japan and Australia to name but a few, you will find links with the following key words and phrases:-

“It’s guaranteed!”

“It’s not possible to lose!”

“Make 5% every month!”

This is the bait used to by the Merchants of Misery to lure millions of dollars away from people who can least afford it. The scam is very well constructed and to the uninitiated very credible. It goes by various names the most common of which is Sports Arbitrage Trading. Arbitrage is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as “the simultaneous buying and selling of securities, currency or commodities in different markets or in derivative forms in order to take advantage of differing prices for the same asset.

Sports Arbitrage Betting (or trading as the marketeers prefer to describe it) can be applied to almost any sport but thoroughbred horse racing is arguably the most predominant because of the large number of events and the vast diversity of bookmakers plying their trade internationally.

Of course in Asia where in most places, notably Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia, having a punt on the horses is almost endemic and the enticement of making easy money is irresistible; having the chance of making money with absolutely no risk is too much of a temptation even for the non-gambler.

One would think that sensible people would realise that if it sounds too good to be true then it usually is but once our “greed button” is pushed common sense is quickly replaced by finding all the wrong reasons to say yes and join the lemmings.

Strictly speaking the ability for Sports Arbitrage Trading to actually make a risk free profit is a reality but the margins are normally so low that a trader would have to engage in so many daily trades that there would be no time for a regular paid occupation. Having said that, the confidence tricksters generally weave their story around championship tennis matches such as Wimbledon as it is pretty easy to understand how it works.

There story goes something like this…

“During The 2007 European Tennis Open Final match in Hamburg, Germany between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer, one trading exchange had Federer at $1.70 and another had Nadal at $2.85. If you were willing to spend $2,000 you would put $1,250 on Federer to win at $1.70 and $750 on Nadal to win at $2.85. No matter who wins the match YOU win the money! Here’s how. If Federer won you would receive $2,125 or a profit of $125 and if Nadal wins you would receive $2,137.50 or a profit of $137.50. Either way you win!”

Now who could refuse that! The con men tell you that opportunities such as these come up every day of the week, year round. Then they go on to tell you about compounding. No enough that you have just returned 6.25% on your money in just one trade now they want you to compound it. Of course compounding is a marvelous device for preventing the gambling public to want their money back short term. And then the coup de grace is given – “Your initial investment of say $8,000 will turn into $12,800 in just 12 months – now how can you beat that!” Of course nobody can.

Here comes the real con. Now if they were simply teaching the public how to handle the convolutions of sports arbitrage betting such as having accounts with more than 20 international bookmakers and to facilitate the transfer of funds between those account one must have an acceptable international account such as Neteller and one must take into account the commissions charged on winnings by betting exchanges – not to mention the currency trade commissions and fluctuations – and the list of complications goes on – that would be fine and they would be justified in charging a fee. However it does not work that way. Our benefactors, having explained the difficulties of you having to trade provide a service in that they will do it for you – in return for a management fee. Unable to resist we can’t wait to send our money and get the scheme underway as every minute we delay will be costing us a fortune.

Because of the various rules of engagement and the fact that the unwitting punters are compounding their profits at say 5% per week no less, a weekly report is published which a Grade 7 student could produce on Microsoft Excel showing the ever increasing asset – regardless of whether the “sophisticated investment” company trades or not!

Payday approaches and the anxious customers start emailing or telephoning the company for some news as to when their fortune will be sent to their bank account. Things slowly start to go wrong. Emails are answered obliquely; phone calls are not returned and before long the “pay day” passed by. Then the excuses start: “because of money laundering laws our funds have temporarily been suspended by Neteller, we are on top of it and your money will be transferred soon”; “we are currently experiencing accounting difficulties but will be able to make your payments within the next 30 days”; and so on and so forth.

Top executives suddenly leave the company AND the country, offices are vacated and mobile phones are not answered. Minimal email communication is made to forestall any legal action while the villains run off with the money to safe havens hoping that the people they screwed have neither the will nor the wherewithal to track them down and bring them to justice.

In our next segment we name names and details of the hawkers and their co-conspirators and in which of the Asian or Australian cities they dwell. If you have fallen foul of these peddlers of greed please log into our blog and let us know. They will have no hiding place.