By Stuart Washington
Michael Macasero had apparently found out the hard way that the noise and traffic on Wanchai's Lockhart Road in the early morning hours was ample cover for discretely [sic] committing murder in a rubbish-strewn alley.
Excerpt from Lockhart Road
by David Morisset
BILLED as a "crime fiction novel set against the background of Australia's trillion-dollar superannuation industry", the self-published author David Morisset sets up a racy story.
An excerpt of the planned novel on Morisset's blog opens with a thirtysomething Filipino-American called Michael Macasero found dead in the red light district of Hong Kong after establishing a hedge fund called Triadica.
The Australian Securities and Investment Commission's interest in a fictional account of a superannuation heist may be heightened, given Morisset's alter ego is David Andrews, a former director of Trio Capital.
Real-life regulators are now investigating the disappearance of $123 million that was invested in the exotic hedge fund Astarra Strategic through Trio Capital.
Andrews's fragment of a novel posted on March 17 details ''investment regulators puzzled by apparent irregularities in a Sydney-based superannuation fund''.
Indeed similarities between Andrews's fictional account and the genesis of Trio Capital are striking.
Matthew Nguyen Littauer, a 34-year-old Vietnamese-American, was found dead in Tokyo's red light district in 2004 after helping establish the nascent Trio Capital funds management business in Australia.
In the novel excerpt Macasero ''had set up supposedly sophisticated vehicles in various tax shelters to provide services for his clients in Hong Kong and was expanding into Australia''.
In real life, Littauer appears to have been a central figure in establishing a network of offshore hedge funds in tax havens that eventually received $123 million in investments through Trio.
Regulators are yet to find the money.
Andrews's use of Morisset as a pen name is established by their likeness in website photographs and similar online career biographies, including a stint as a diplomat in the Middle East.
Andrews is an economist and has previously worked as head of the Anglican Church's investment arm, Glebe Asset Management.
Calls to his western Sydney business were not being answered yesterday.