Written by Wilfred Ling  Thursday, 08 March 2012 Japanese financial authorities suspended the operations of AIJ Investment Advisors after it was found that nearly 90% of its assets were unaccountable for. The amount unaccounted for were alleged to be 185 billion yen or about US$2.3 billion. It was reported that 84 pension funds had invested with AIJ or equivalent to 880,000 people’s pensions. Out of these 84 pension funds, 13 funds had a quarter of their investments exposed to AIJ! What is astonishing was that AIJ had reported annual returns of up to 240 percent! I think we can learn from some lessons here that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Can anyone imagine what happens if your life savings and retirement money goes up in smoke like this? The investors who invested with AIJ were not grandmothers or grandfathers but institutions which ......