Intellectuals Fall Prey to the Scam Sharks

The collapse of investment funds is big news in Russia these days, so it was something of a surprise when the fall last week of a firm called Chara registered barely a blip on the media screen.


After several years of operation, Chara Bank -- also known as Chara Insurance Company and by other names as well -- suddenly announced to its shareholders that, as a result of the Oct. 11 ruble catastrophe, it was out of funds and would stop paying dividends for four months.


We've heard this story before. Since the sensational collapse of the MMM investment fund in July, at least 15 companies have gone belly up, and millions of investors have lost their savings. Like MMM, these fly-by-night firms drew investors like flies with promises of exorbitant returns in ad campaigns that literally flooded the airwaves.


Chara was different -- or so its members thought. First, it promised returns of 20 percent, not 2,000. Second, it didn't advertise much, appealing to the reverse psychology of many Russians who believe that the best things are shared among friends and never advertised. Third, it apparently was backed up by some solid real estate investments in Moscow. Chara just seemed to have it all: It was more respectable than those investment scams that were here today, gone tomorrow. But it still offered free money.


So Chara pulled in those people you would expect to eschew such money games: the intelligentsia, the educated elite, the government brass. Everyone knows someone who was in Chara -- teachers, doctors, people with solid careers. Prominent figures such as the theater critic Alexander Shirvindt and sober-minded people at the Foreign Ministry are reported to have invested.


Unlike MMM, whose shareholders were mostly blue-collar workers in search of a lucky break, Chara members were looking for some steady, not flashy income. They would put a few thousand dollars into Chara and then use the monthly ruble dividends to pay their bills. It was a convenient way for the educated elite to supplement their diminishing incomes, making it possible for people who deserve to live well to simply get by.


But then Chara went bust, and the free money -- at least for now -- has stopped flowing. Rather than feeling angry, though, Chara's dignified members are mostly embarrassed. How could they have gotten caught in such a game? They ask themselves.


A teacher I know who jokingly calls herself a Chara "veteran" freely admitted last week that with her monthly dividends she had long ago made back the $5,000 she invested -- and which she assumes she has now lost. But making money out of thin air, she said, was the way she afforded decent food and clothes for her family rather than just scraping by on a subsistence salary.


The sad thing is that there are respectable investments and a stock market in Russia where these peoples' money could really flourish and bring solid returns. But right now there are few ways for the small investor to get to them. So the investment scam sharks continue their profitable roam, just like Chichikov, the hero of Nikolai Gogol's novel "Dead Souls," who traverses the countryside buying up dead serfs so he can cheat the government out of more money. Until things change, "Chichikovesque" investment funds will just keep rounding up today's dead souls.