The Latin American country of Colombia has been plunged into turmoil by the activities of "alternative investment schemes" similar to some schemes in Jamaica. One scheme was even called DFRE which in Spanish stands for "Fast Easy Cash Money".

DIANE ABBOTT

Three million Colombians had invested well over £200 million in these schemes. Many poor people had borrowed money to invest. The schemes did initially pay out generously. But this was, apparently, because they were simply laundering drug money. Last week the schemes began to collapse.

Colombians reacted with anger and violence. And the country went into meltdown. Three people have died, including one investor who lost all his money and committed suicide.

The public fear and anger is so great that the government had to declare a state of emergency. Special legislation was passed. Security forces had to impose a curfew in 12 towns and cities where mobs had looted the offices of pyramid schemes. The police have had to use batons and tear gas to control angry investors. In Popayan in the south-western part of Colombia, 2,000 depositors stormed an investment firm's offices. In Risaralda in western Colombia, police caught two men hurrying out the back door of a scheme's office with suitcases of cash. They offered one of the cases to the police to let them go. They are now in custody. BBC reporter Jeremy McDermott told a British audience that this was the safest place for them because conned investors had threatened to lynch them.

Angry and desperate investors have poured out their feelings on local media. "Everybody was full of hope for December, for the holidays. The people thought their lives would change,"said one man who had lost the equivalent of US$15,000. Another distraught investor explained that he had lost over US$17,000: "I mortgaged my house, invested all my savings,"he said. Another investor said she had lost US$13,000: "It's so uncertain, we've heard the company's bankrupt, we don't know what's happened."

The men and women who ran these Colombian alternative investment schemes appear to have been exceptionally brazen.

The people behind one scheme disappeared, leaving a note stuck to the doors taunting the investors for having been duped. It said: "Now for being stupid and believing in witchcraft you will have to work much harder to recoup the money you gave us."The office of another scheme had a greeting card stuck on the door which read: "We wish you a sad Christmas and a shameful New Year."

Police have been sent to take over whatever assets remain in identified pyramid schemes, while arrest warrants have been issued for those suspected of being behind the widespread fraud. But this seems to be very much closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. The leaders of the main pyramid schemes have already fled the country, taking millions of naïve investors' money with them. Many are sceptical as to whether most people will ever get their money back. The former Finance Minister Juan Camilo Restrepo said: "I doubt that any of these measures will succeed in recovering the money which has already been stolen."

The public uproar is so great that the President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe had to go on television to reassure the nation. "Fellow countrymen. Collecting money, illegally and on a grand scale, however it is done, whatever the fiction is behind it, is a crime, a crime against the economic and social order,"he said during a televised address to the nation. But ordinary Colombians might be forgiven for wondering why the government did not act sooner.

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