Amber Gold and other Poland's suspicious institutions

I suspect a lot had to do with the selling. Personally of the people I know who have said they are in trouble, all have foreign currency mortgages.


This is true. In Warsaw, there was almost a mania for buying second properties as buy-to-let which is financial speculation. The people I feel sorry for are those who only own one flat and were missold mortgages in currencies they don't earn.

In 1990s Swiss frank mortgage was a much better option than PLN. Ziemowit explained it well.

No. Although the outcome would have been positive, because of the lower interest rates today, the amount of risk you take on initially is the same; your repayments depend on a parameter that you cannot master, the level of interest rates. The only mortgages that should be offered to the majority of the population are ones with fixed interest rates over the whole life of the mortgage; it is not the "average joe" 's remit to speculate on/hedge interest rates, that is the banks role


You must be kidding, with a CHF/PLN at 3.38 versus 2 at the time??

Hedge/speculate? where is their risk when they fix the libor rates? The banks cannot lose because they never play fair.

What does it mean "at the time"? At which time? The CHF/CHF at 2 did last for a very short period only, so it is unfair to point to this particular, the lowest ever since 2001, ratio as a benchmark.

When I said "things have returned more or less to normal", I meant the sort of new "balance" that was established on a much higher level, of course, roughly around the 3.33 peak onto which it climbed steeply in February 2009 from its lowest at 1.96 in August 2008, but less than the 4.11 peak of 10 February 2011.

edit:I don't understand why the chart has not shown itself :-)

KNF put severe restrictions on the distribution of CHF mortages around nov 2008. For the 2 years prior to this, sales of CHF mortgages had vastly outnumbered those in PLN, while CHF/PLN oscillated between 2.50 and 2 (2 being reached in July 2008). Even taking 2.50 as a reference, that is 50% below the 3.38 rate. A heck of a drop by any standard..


Well, if ever this story comes to and end and banks get sanctioned (in addtiion to Barclays), some people might be in for a shock. As the press reporting has amply shown (see FT), the BoE was, with a nod and a wink, pushing banks to lowertheir LIBOR estimates, in order not to show that they were having difficulties in getting interbank financing. during the height of the crisis So if redress is sought, the new estimates should be higher.. Guess what will happen to millions of people in the UK who have mortgages indexed on LIBOR??

Yes and in 2008 or 2009 then returns on gold probably were much higher than returns on bank interest, shares, bonds, property or any other asset class. Coincidentally the same time these gold deposit shysters entered the market.

The principle is exactly the same - people who signed swiss frank mortgages thought they were able to circumvent economic reality but over a 25 year period were sure to come unstuck. By the way there was an interesting article in last weeks GW that some banks were calling people who had more expensive swiss frank mortgages and asking them to provide extra collateral.

I havent seen the statistics showing pln mortgages to be more underwater than swiss ones - where was that published.

That's just what I mentioned in one of my preceding posts.

As an interesting aside, the WIBOR seems to be creeping up recently. Wonder if this will prompt a interest rate cut, like they've been speculating about for a while?


That's my logic behind having a PLN mortgage - I earn in it, so I know exactly how much I need to earn in it to repay the mortgage. Being at the mercy of the easily-manipulated FX market when earning in a minor currency just seems senseless.

Didn't son of Tusk work for them ?

That's plain common sense


Before any one intervenes, it's not a 50% drop but a 35% drop. Apologies. Still a sharp drop..

Pity, I was just going to call my private banker and take out a mortgage @ 6% (all in) and just sit back and watch the money roll in.

7% return for doin nada, not bad.

Ahh, I was just waiting for such a moronic remark. You forgot to mention Jews/Palikot/liberals :)
Tusk's son works the Gdańsk Airport Authority.
Maybe we could have a talk about Maria Kaszyńska's husband shady business connections, then ?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLT_Express#Amber_Gold_financial_questions

:):):):):)

Moronic vs funny.

2 things I don't quite grasp:

1) is Amber Gold a bank or not (someone referred to it as a 'parabank')?
2) if not, how can they be allowed to take deposits from the public?
3) if yes, how can a former bankrupt be allowed to run a bank? I thought the vetting process of KNF was quite severe..

I checked it, sorry he didn't work directly for Amber Gold but for OLT Express owned by Amber Gold.


So he works for a public compnay. Excellent.

Me! Me!



Look, if one day I start collecting deposits from people living in my street, with all formalities fulfilled, who forbids me to do it?


That would be impossible in communism, indeed.

Fortunately, we have capitalism. :):):):)


And one day JKMikke inserted a bayonette into his stomache.

An interesting interview with Gwiazdowski, a financial expert:

1. The authorities had no legal right to meddle into Amber Gold`s functioning. Only when a client reports his/her case to prosecutors, action can be taken.

2. Parabanks and financial pyramids have duped people for centuries all around the world.
3. People like being duped. Madoff managed to dupe not only common investors but also big institutions like major state banks etc.
4. Actually, modern finances are based on one giant pyramid. It also refers to state banks.

In most countries (and I think that includes Poland, hence my questions), non banks are forbidden from taking deposits from the public. The quidproquo is that should a bank go bust, deposits are reimbursed through a guarantee scheme (to the tune of 50 k€, I think)


People managing a bank have to be individually approved by the KNF, and a bankrupt would never get approval.

I don`t think so.

Various institutions operate in the market and act as banks and the only difference is that some are licensed by the state while others aren`t. That`s all.

I don`t need to get a license from Financial Supervision Authority to collect deposits from the people in my street. I can start doing it tomorrow.....


Yes, but it doesn`t work for parabanks and people who deal with them should be aware of it.


That `s why Amber Gold is a parabank without a license.

Such things can be checked. But greed blinds people.

lokaty.wieszjak.pl/warto-wiedziec/307214,Polacy-nie-odrozniaja-banku-od-parabanku.html

On the whole, Amber Gold scandal is a good warning for people.

But I am sure in a few years` time we will hear about another scandal and the thread wil continue..........

Unfortunately,that's wrong:
1) In most countries, you can only start a bank if you are approved by the banking regulator
2) to take deposits from the public, you need to be a bank

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-banking_financial_company

Come on, bank or non-bank/parabank, it is all the same.



Your link
NBFCs offer most sorts of banking services, such as loans and credit facilities, private education funding, retirement planning, trading in money markets, underwriting stocks and shares, TFCs(Term Finance Certificate) and other obligations.

And if you mean this:
However they are typically not allowed to take deposits from the general public

You need to quote from the Polish site.

Like this one:
pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabank

This is one that really surprizes me. My own business trades a lot of forex and we get inspections almost every year from the NBP (not the KNF admittedly). We have done nothing wrong and nobody ever made a complaint but they always say they have the right to inspect us whenever they want.

But here is an organization that is taking deposits which to me is clearly against the law but they are saying they are powerless to inspect it !

I advise you to read The Godfather. A fascinating book about US finances in the past. Years passed, but it is still valid stuff. I read it a dozen times and today I know everything about investing. :):):):) That`s why I didn`t fall for those Madoff or Amber Gold acts.

So one thing and the opposite are the same? Pawian, you have just created by yourself a whole new branch in logical science !!


Here it is, the link to the KNF's site which states clearly that without a banking licence organisations are not allowed to take deposits from the public

knf.gov.pl/en/About_us/Public_warnings/index.html


Indeed. What is surprising is that Amber Gold, like a few others, is clearly listed on the KNF's site as an organization taking deposits without the appropriate banking licence. That in itself should have been sufficient for the Prokurator to visit them ..

Stop squabbling about the names. Be more mature - we are talking about practice, not theory now. :):):)


So it is done in another way. Clients sign perfectly legal contracts with the parabanking institution and they lend their money to it.

m.onet.pl/biznes,7dfen

4 paragraph from the bottom.


Legally, everything is all right.

It should have been sufficient for him to visit them. But it wasn't! What's more, Mr Amber Gold the President shouldn't have been allowed to register his new company in court (KRS) since he was sentenced five times for financial fraud before it (though only one sentence should have been sufficient to forbid him from doing so for the five following years from the verdict).

I agree Ziemowit, someone did not do their job properly there. I just hope that consequences are drawn and whoever was too lazy/incompetent is fired!!


Sure . All hunky dory in cloud cuckoo land!!

Various things happen here and there:


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff

I wonder all the time if Amber Gold started to pay out deposits to their clients yesterday as they had promised before. I am inclined to think they eventually did as there was no information about it on a TVN CNBC Polish business channel all evening. Indeed, the fact they were doing so would have been no news for anyone except Amber Gold clients.