Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Sunset on Sunrise Equities--an overlooked story

My buddy Tom Mannis at The Bench writes about the collapse of Sunrise Equities, a firm headed by a Salman Ibrahim, a man who passed himself off as a devout Muslim who sought out other members of his faith to invest in his firm.

This story is getting lost among the constant barrage of stories about the banking crisis, the presidential election, and in Chicago, the Major League Baseball playoffs.

Over 200 investors, mostly from the Pakistani-American community based is Chicago's North Side, invested into Sunset--some put their life savings into the firm.

Ibrahim has vanished--and there are fears Sunrise investors' money--up to $50 million--has vanished with him.

I'll be keeping an eye on this scandal.

Technorati tags:

3 comments:

Greybeard said...

Charging interest is forbidden by the Koran, and is one of the problems that will have to be resolved before Islamic countries can truly join the rest of the contemporary world.
How was this Islamic enterprise making any money?

yo said...

The gig with that is (very short version from a non-accountant) that the interest is actually calculated into the over-all value of the loan.

The lender then gives that amount to the borrower, and the borrower makes payments based on the calculated amount.

So, really ... the interest is still being paid, but is not considered to be "interest".

Marathon Pundit said...

Hmmm....but I still don't get it.