7 Sep 11: Speak Asia, a Singapore based online consumer survey company, which calls itself as the largest integrated online survey group in the Asian subcontinent was involved in fraud by cheating many investors of crores of rupees across the country. This company has 150 franchisees in India. There are more than 20 lakh investors across India known as panelists. The company promised to give returns of Rs.52,000 on an investment of Rs.11,000 in a year.
Investors from all around the country are lodging complaints on this fraud. Police from various states like Pune, Rajasthan, Haryana, Goa and Madhya Pradesh are too searching for the accused. The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) in Mumbai has made the first arrests of the Indian head, various technical heads and distributors of the company’s franchisees in India.
Recently, the Hyderabad police arrested 4 global distributors of the company. The arrested persons were Deepankar Sarkar, an active promoter from Raipur; Ravi Khanna who operated Seamless Outsourcing; Shaikh Rais Latif, a technical consultant of Tulsient Information System Private Limited; Rahul Pannalal Shaf who ran Herna Ventures Pvt. Ltd.
With this multi crore fraud coming in to light, the central government has instructed the police departments to take the help of private forensic labs to keep check on the bogus companies on Internet. The Ministry of Company Affairs has assured to work with RBI and SEBI to protect the interest of investors in the company.
Source: Economic Times