Ex-Millennium Global Manager Balboa Charged in Bond Fraud

[alp227]

Source: BusinessWeek

Ex-Millennium Global Investments Ltd. portfolio manager Michael Balboa was charged with fraud and sued by U.S. regulators for allegedly participating in a scheme involving Nigerian sovereign debt.

A criminal complaint unsealed today in federal court in Manhattan alleges that Balboa and two unidentified co- conspirators sent “phony mark-to-market quotes” to an independent valuation agent who inflated month-end market prices for Nigerian warrants.

In a related lawsuit, the Securities and Exchange Commission today claimed that Balboa, 42, of Surrey, England, and Gilles De Charsonville, 49, of Madrid and a broker at BCP Securities LLC, used the overvalued securities positions to “generate millions of dollars in illegitimate management and performance fees.”

“The scheme caused the fund to drastically overvalue the securities holdings by as much as $163 million in August 2008, which in turn allowed the fund to report inflated and falsely- positive monthly returns,” the SEC alleged.

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-01/ex-millennium-global-manager-balboa-charged-in-bond-fraud.html

[dkf]

1. Wow.

[DCKit]

2. Series?1@1!!!! You'd think that any investor hearing the word "Nigerian" would run the other way. nt