Participants in the Madoff investment scandal group of hedge funds owned by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co, as well as, its parent companies in December 2010, seeking more than $2 billion and alleging that company executives ignored "obvious warning signs" that Madoff was running a fraud. Picard alleged that Tremont failed to do any meaningful review of Madoff's operations or purported investment results, blindly allowing Rye to turn over half its $6 billion in client assets to Madoff and losing half that money when the scheme finally collapsed. The payment of $1 billion to the Madoff truste, provided by Massachusetts Mutual Life as a loan to
Foreign direct investment in Iran introduced the Build–operate–transfer (BOT) scheme for Iranian projects. This is a rather new possibility in the Iranian market. In this scheme, the foreign partner invests in one project, which is then operated for a certain period of time by the foreign investor before it is fully transferred to the Iranian government. Iranian authorities are showing some flexibility regarding the BOT, which could potentially pave the way for more foreign investment in the market. Iran's interest in free zones can be traced back to the 1970s. Free-trade (FTZ) and special economic zones (SEZ) have been established to provide additional investment incentives