The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed former world champion of billiards Michael Joseph Ferreira and five other accused to surrender within a week in the multi-crore QNet scam.
The court rejected their plea for anticipatory bail and directed them to co-operate in the investigation.
Besides Ferreira, others included, Srinivas Rao Vanka and Magaral Veervalli Balaji, both directors of Vihaan Direct selling (India) Pvt Ltd, Suresh Thimiri, director of Transview Enterprises India Pvt Ltd and Malcolm Nozer Desai, who is a 20 percent stakeholder in Vihaan.
The bench headed by Justice P C Ghose accepted the Maharashtra's standing council Nishant Khatneshwarkar's argument that the accused have failed to join the investigation and the charges are serious.
The Bombay High Court had rejected their bail pleas in May. Earlier in February 2016, the special Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (MPID) Court had also rejected anticipatory bail applications of these five. The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police, which is probing the case, had invoked the stringent MPID Act against controversial multi-level marketing (MLM) company QNet, which has denied any wrongdoing on its part.
Complainant Gurupreet Singh Anand, a computer consultant from Lokhandawala, Andheri had registered an FIR in which he had stated that his wife was duped for Rs30,000 by some people who had introduced themselves as the independent representatives (IRs) of QNet.
He contended that the illegal money circulation scheme is being conducted in India by changing names from GoldQuest to QuestNet to the current QNet.
The serious Frauds Investigation Office has already termed the Gold Quest International Pvt Ltd and Quest Enterprises India Pvt Ltd has called multi-level marketing (MLM) schemes run by overseas operators as a potential threat to national security.
While investigating, the agency said that it was provided wrong and fabricated data from the MLM operators twice .
The investigation did extensive and meticulous data analysis and has brought out clear cut falsification of accounts as both these data referred to as old and new data do not match with the figures of the balance sheet.
QNet, the controversial, Hong Kong-based operator uses multiple names for its MLM scheme and GoldQuest, QuestNet, QNet, QI Ltd and QI group are some of its better known names.
In February 2014, the ED registered a case under the prevention of money laundering act (PMLA) against QNet, Vihaan Direct Selling, Ferreira and QNet founder Vijay Eswaran and three other independent representatives (IRs) of the MLM operator.
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