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Documented by Goa Desc Resource Centre Ph:2252660 Website: www.goadesc.org Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Press Clippings on the web: http://www.goadesc.org/mem/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Salient Online sinks with several crores ---------------------------------------------------------- Barely months after the State was rocked by several financial companies closing shops and leaving thousands of investors in the lurch, Goa woke up on Friday to the horrendous news that Salient Online Solutions Pvt Ltd, the Chennai-based company had suddenly closed operations in Goa.
Today, when investors went to the company’s office at Unitech City Centre, Panjim they were in for the shock of their lives. The company’s offices were closed, the website was not functioning and there was no news of its chief executive officer, M Rajesh Sunder. However, according to DIG Muktesh Chander, “the CEO who is from Chennai is absconding and we feel that he has fled the state. We have sent a police team, to Chennai to arrest him”.
According to people associated with the company, Rajesh Sunder had duped his ‘employees’ of an approximate Rs 70 to Rs 90 crores. For the 500 individuals who had gathered outside the closed office of the firm at Panjim and the tens of thousands of Goans who had invested in the company the future appears extremely bleak as they will not be able to get their money back.
The fury of the crowd was so great that the office, which was closed, was broken into by the angry mob which damaged the five computers and scattered files in search of the cash that was to be repaid to them. The police, who reached the scene at around 1 pm found an amount of Rs 3,000 lying on the floor and the office in a mess with files and papers lying all about the place. A police team of five constables headed by PSI A Vaigankar was assigned to guard the premises.
The police were acting on a compliant filed by Ashley Afonso, of Quepem, who filed a case of cheating against the company and the directors Ravi Shankar and Shyam Sunder who many claim is the brother of the CEO Rajesh Sunder. The police have sealed the office premises and have so far managed to recover some receipt books, a rubber stamp, membership forms, phone bills and other documents that would prove a clue to the magnanimity of the scam, according to PI (Crime) C L Patil. In a bid to recover the money, the police as part of their investigation will be seizing the accused property and vehicles.
What has shocked the people is the fact that Salient Online Solutions Pvt Ltd was a registered company with the Registrar of Companies and was filing its income tax, sales tax and other returns, besides the CEO of the firm is also known to have a Personal Account Number (PAN). What triggered off the police to investigate this company was an advertisement that appeared in the media which commended Salient Online as a business outsourcing firm and which generated tremendous goodwill among the investors.
According to the DIG, “there was some suspicion about this firm and we suspected that something fishy was going on and we decided to check the antecedents of it because we felt that it was too good to be true as money was being made quickly.’’ According to people who worked with the company, the modus operandi was simple.
Salient Online, which started operations in June 2004, invited anyone with a computer to fill in data of fifty names and numbers per day. The investors had to log onto a website www.salientonline.net and put these entries into that site. The investors were asked to deposit a certain amount of money and were promised one third of that amount by the end of the month. As it was easy money, more and more investors kept pumping money into the site, either in their own name, names of their family members or in fictitious names.
The investors had to invest Rs 3000 for an account. After which a message would appear on the screen informing the investor that he had completed the quota for the day. For every investment of Rs 3000, Salient Online would return Rs 2000 after a month after deducting Rs 100 TDS.
Says Sidesh Pednekar, Siolim. “I saw my friend invest Rs 1.2 lakh and recover Rs 70,000 and that interested me and I decided to invest Rs 30,000 on May 3. I have lost a lot of money.’’ The rush was so much that many investors, in Goa, purchased extra computers and converted homes into offices in the desperate bid to make fast money. Says Wernen D’Costa, Dona Paula, “the lure was so much that even architects and doctors invested. I myself put in Rs 36,000’’. However, the police are still unsure how much has been cheated but rough estimates put it at several crores.
But what was shocking was that though the police had knowledge of the directors and the modus operandi they did nothing about it.
When questioned why the police did not take any action against the firm, DIG Mukesh Chander said “so long as the investors were paid nobody came forward to lodge a complaint. But now because of the police taking action against the firm we were able to puncture this bubble in time before this pyramid scheme could grow any larger”.
In fact no one knew that the company was going bust despite the fact that the server was not operational for five months. But according to the security guard, the office was functioning normally till yesterday.
For the thousands of Goans who had lost their money this is another case of cheating with no hopes of getting their money back. . ------------------------------------ HERALD 7/05/05 page 1 ------------------------------------
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