Word: unitrust
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Bennett’s original $4-million gift, financed by the sale of his antique automobile collection in 1991, was placed in an HMC-managed charitable remainder unitrust, which pays a donor a fixed percentage of the trust each year for the rest of the donor’s life. Bennett was slated to receive five percent of the trust annually, with the entire trust going to Harvard upon his death...
...Ogami's hilarious bumblings over the following months bring to mind Dr. Evil in an Austin Powers sequel?hilarious, that is, if not for the fact that they torpedoed a bank serving 18,000 poor Filipinos. G.O. Group had raised the cash to buy Unitrust by selling unregistered bonds in Japan. He loaned the proceeds to dummy local owners to make the purchase, says Inoue, in order to sidestep Philippine laws prohibiting majority foreign ownership of banks. Ogami announced his September 2001 takeover by posting his face on billboards around Manila and running a two-page newspaper ad offering jobs...
...Instead of inspiring confidence, his behavior caused a bank run. Startled depositors yanked their accounts, and Philippine staffers?not inclined to swallow the weird, cultish rituals Ogami's officers tried to impose?quit in droves. Unitrust was forced to close its doors this January. With the bank in receivership, thousands of remaining depositors are unable to access their funds. "I'm about to lose hope," says one, whose account held all his earnings from years of labor abroad. Rafael Buenaventura, governor of the Philippines central bank, concedes, "This is a clear case of our weak regulatory environment...
...Ogami noticed in Japan. The press and the police began probing his dealings. His last public appearance was at a Tokyo press conference this January, held to announce his movie's imminent arrival in theaters around Asia. Instead, a swarm of journalists sprayed him with questions about the Unitrust bank and the police investigation. Wearing a diaphanous black shirt that showed off his physique, Ogami denied any wrongdoing. With the box office receipts from his surefire blockbuster, he insisted, "I'll pay the money back." The film has yet to be screened in a single theater...
...What remains is the mystery of how a character like Ogami managed to inspire trust in so many for so long. Francis Yuseco, the Philippine banker who negotiated the Unitrust deal, marvels, "I really thought he would help our country. But he turned out to be just a con artist." Indeed, that was the one activity at which Genta Ogami?kung fu master, movie star, savior of the world?truly excelled...