Macquarie Atlas Roads Group (MQA.AX) is an ASX-listed revaluation fraud masquerading as a toll road operator. An investment cartel headed by Macquarie controls the "market" price of MQA, and has ramped the stapled security in order to fraudulently obtain inflated management fees. The top 20 shareholders own 91% of MQA and control its share price. This revaluation fraud is the true purpose of MQA, the real reason for its creation and existence. At heart, MQA is no different from Fifth Element Resources.
Like other such scams, MQA is structured in a Byzantine maze of related parties, crossholdings, loans and sham transactions. MQA's annual report is deliberately deceptive, packed with accounting fraud designed to obscure a very simple business model. MQA's assets generate $49m of cash flows, of which the criminal managers absorb a base fee of $18m. After this 37% fee, the remaining $31m is available for distribution to victim investors. If MQA's share price was not openly controlled by a cartel, it would have collapsed. Instead it was ramped to a $1.6bn market cap, packaged in financial "products" and dumped on granny investors.
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As a result of the ramp, the criminal managers entitled themselves to a staggering $58m "performance fee". No magical unicorns or leprechauns need be presumed to explain this straightline ramp. The explanation to this mystery is depressingly simple. A small group of criminals had the power to move the share price, and would benefit handsomely from doing so. So they did.
It is highly likely that the investment cartel that ramped MQA during the past year explicitly discussed their fraud in company emails and on recorded telephone lines, including the exact endpoint of their ramp. Macquarie is a criminal organization that considers itself above the law. But since ASIC operates a zero enforcement policy, this will never be investigated and the criminals will die as free rich men.
Like other such scams, MQA is structured in a Byzantine maze of related parties, crossholdings, loans and sham transactions. MQA's annual report is deliberately deceptive, packed with accounting fraud designed to obscure a very simple business model. MQA's assets generate $49m of cash flows, of which the criminal managers absorb a base fee of $18m. After this 37% fee, the remaining $31m is available for distribution to victim investors. If MQA's share price was not openly controlled by a cartel, it would have collapsed. Instead it was ramped to a $1.6bn market cap, packaged in financial "products" and dumped on granny investors.
As a result of the ramp, the criminal managers entitled themselves to a staggering $58m "performance fee". No magical unicorns or leprechauns need be presumed to explain this straightline ramp. The explanation to this mystery is depressingly simple. A small group of criminals had the power to move the share price, and would benefit handsomely from doing so. So they did.
It is highly likely that the investment cartel that ramped MQA during the past year explicitly discussed their fraud in company emails and on recorded telephone lines, including the exact endpoint of their ramp. Macquarie is a criminal organization that considers itself above the law. But since ASIC operates a zero enforcement policy, this will never be investigated and the criminals will die as free rich men.
