QNet: Six bank accounts frozen, more arrests soon, says EOW

According to an additional commissioner of police, the EOW has frozen six bank accounts of QNet that have Rs46 crore as balance, and their teams would soon visit Bengaluru and Chennai to arrest some suspects
Economic offences wing (EOW) of Mumbai police, which is probing Hong Kong-based controversial multi-level marketing (MLM) operator QNet has so far frozen six bank accounts related with the company. According to a report from the Times of India, these bank accounts have a balance of Rs46 crore. In addition, Manjunath Hegde, arrested in this cheating case, has been sent to judicial custody, the report says. "We have asked the firm to submit all documents. Some office-bearers have approached the Sessions Court for anticipatory bail," the report says quoting, Rajvardhan Sinha, additional commissioner of police, Mumbai. Sinha told the newspaper that over 50 complainants have approached them in the QNet cheating case and the police will again visit Bengaluru and Chennai to arrest suspects. Earlier this month, EOW registered a case against QNet, for allegedly duping thousands of investors by selling them plastic and glass products terming them miraculous objects for treating severe diseases like Cancer. The complainant, Gurupreet Singh Anand, a computer consultant from Lokhandawala, Andheri in his first information report (FIR) stated that his wife was duped for Rs30,000 by some people who had introduced themselves as the independent representatives (IRs) of QNet. Anand told the police, “They (IRs) had said that one of the bio-products my wife bought could be used to treat my 12-year-old son's brain-related diseases.” The FIR names five accused, including QNet's Hong Kong-based founder Dato Vijay Eswaran, a Malaysian by birth and an Indian by ethnicity, who is photographed hobnobbing with the Prince of Saudi Arabia, in order to enhance its credibility in the Gulf. What is QNet?QuestNet and GoldQuest, the MLM companies that had shut shop in 2009 following police action are back with a bigger bang. They now call themselves as QNet and are thriving in an environment where tens of thousands of Ponzis and MLM companies are able to lure people into believing that they have the formula to instant riches and a high growth career. While QuestNet and GoldQuest, which mainly sold numismatic gold coins (they claimed they were limited edition coins that whose value would increase over time) in 2009 were forced to shut shop in India, their new avatar QNet offers a broader range of lifestyle ‘enhancing’ products (holiday packages,diamond watches, bio-discs, Chi-Pendants and herbal products for anything between Rs30,000 to Rs7 lakh), which promise fabulously high returns so long as new distributors are enrolled rapidly. Its product brochure says, “With 8 ways to earn and up to 50% of the sales paid out in commissions, QNET offers the most dynamic and innovative compensation plan in the direct selling profession.” Like SpeakAsia, QNet is also registered in Singapore and has been banned in many countries, including Iran. In 2007, APLI, the direct selling Association of Indonesia, considered GoldQuest or QuestNet as a pyramid scheme. According to Wikipedia.org, QNET has received a Fatwa by Dar al-Ifta that its business is not halal within Islamic law on the basis that it could harm the Egyptian economy. The company has also been accused of operating a product-based pyramid scheme. At the end of August 2012, the Ministry Of Commerce and Industry of Saudi Arabia banned Qnet accusing it of stealing and falsification as well as not being registered with the ministry. Furthermore, a message was published on the official website of the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Commerce and Industry warning the Saudi Arabian people not to be involved in such schemes under any pressure of false promises, mentioning the company name 'QNet' specifically as one on those fraudulent schemes operating in the country. The governments of India, Iran, Indonesia, Nepal, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, The Sudan, Syria, and Turkey have at various points shutdown local offices of the company, arrested key members involved with the company, or pre-emptively banned the company from entering, Wikipedia.org, says. Business ModelAccording to Wikipedia.org, QNet's business model has been described as a simple pyramid scheme, where initial entrants to the scheme do make money, but as the number of independent representatives (IR) increases, finding more IR's becomes harder and harder, until those that join late are unable to recover even their initial outlay and the model collapses. The compensation plan operates by the recruitment of customers by existing IR. An IR is provided with an ID that gives access to a 'tracking centre' (TC) in its computer system through which the IR's sales are tracked. A TC has a left and right customer group. Every customer owns a TC which is then placed on the left or right customer side of the IR's TC. A 'direct' transaction (a customer's personal reference or sale) is counted as one transaction. An 'indirect’ transaction (someone in the cusomer's TC buys/refers/sells) is also, counted as one transaction. The company pays $250 each time three product sales on an IR's left customer group are matched by three product sales on the right. RYTHM foundation -derived from the acronym 'Raise Yourself To Help Mankind'- is a charity organization created by QI Group. What QNet sells?At Present, QNet mainly markets products made by other subsidiary companies of QI Group. The products are in travel packages, nutrition, personal care, home care, collectibles, fashion accessories and education. One of the products being marketed by the company is the Amezcua Bio Disc (also spelled BioDisc and BioDisk) which the company claims can "redefine and harmonise the energy of water, greatly maximising its positive affect on the human body". These and other detailed claims of often miraculous properties have been widely denounced as fraudulent by various scientists, media commentators and watchdog organisations. Critics have noted that the claims are based on thoroughly debunked pseudoscientific concepts such as hexagonal water and that they have never been validated by a peer-reviewed process. QNet has stated in a document published to its representatives that there are no known test and approval bodies to date on such products, Wikipedia.org says.