speak-asia-online-logoWith most of the important court cases Speak Asia are involved in delayed until June or July and seemingly little development overall in the month of April, there hasn’t been all that much on Speak Asia to discuss.

Whilst some senior panelists continue to run around telling everyone to be patient, “trust the company” and in the face of court delays even downplay the heavy emphasis placed on the various cases Speak Asia are involved in, others are seemingly fed up and bringing their plight and stories to light.

One such senior panelist is Raghuyveer Bere, a self-described ‘Kohei’ panelist from Hyderabad.

After requesting a refund and getting nowhere, Bere penned a letter to Ashok Bahirwani explaining his situation:

support-defreezal of the bank accounts

raghuveer bere

9/30/11

to speakasian.ash.

sir gvng

i am raghuveer bere,from hyderabad (certified kohei). i had a telephonic conversation with u 2 days back and as per our discussion i am writing this mail to u.

I have transferred an amount of 3 lac rupees on 11 Apr to master franchisee account, for applying for a franchisee for hyderabad/warangal, but i couldnot send an application with some doubts while filling it and contacted mr calvin. and i was not happy with the response and not sent any application.

later mr. Charan has been appointed as R.M for andhra and i went to goa on his invitation to sort out the issue. I have made every possible effort to get the refund of the said amount and all this has happend before the freeze of master franchisee account.

Mr.Ashish dandekar has sent an sms that, my amount can only be refunded after defreeze of company account.

My bank account (Individua current account,Axis bank ltd,Warangal branch) was freezed on Aug 5,which contained an amount of 39000rs balance in it,by an order of D.C.P of APCID. But I have not received any notice for the same from police.

pls inform me the effort of others like me whose amounts have to be refunded and bank accounts have been freezed, pls guide me to do the necessary, thank u

Most notably, is the fact that Bere had requested a refund on April 11th 2011, long before the CID stepped in and started to freeze bank accounts (this started to happen in May 2011).

Despite this however, Ashish Dandekar (suspected of being the long-standing “unofficial” COO of Speak Asia) advised Bere that he was unable to get a refund due to bank accounts being frozen.

Two days later, Bahirwani replied.

Ashok Bahirwani speakasian.ashok@gmail.com

10/2/11

to me

Dear Mr. Raghuveer,

Can you please inform me if you are a panelist of Speakasia.

Jai Speakasia

Despite having talked on the phone, stated he was a “Kohei certified” panelist from Hyderabad, Bahirwani appeared to simply brush Bere off.

Despite six months passing since initially depositing his money though, Bere maintained his patience and replied:

raghuveer bere

10/2/11

to Ashok

sir gmng

yes i am a panelist,my mail contained that information “raghuveer certified kohei from hyderabad”

thank u

Despite this conversation occurring eight months ago, to date Bere has not received a reply.

Fed up and frustrated, Bere yesterday decided to go public with his plight on Facebook. In an open letter to Ashok Bahirwani, Bere wrote:

Dear Ashok ji

Namashkaar

I appreciate ur sincere effort in forming n lead role in aispa. I salute the spirit of Merwin castro, n specially the organised effort of Aman azad.

I was in ct with u over phone n mails before aispa is formed. I agree that u r one among those Indian citizens who live for others and feel social responsibility.

But sir i suspect ur relation with SAOL and its officials, Let me explain… why.

I am Raghuveer Bere , a panelist from HYDERABAD. I wrote quite a few mails and several calls to Singapore office , but miserably the response is utterly worst.

When i called n insisted them to give a reply to my mails, the person who attends my call frequently said that some from saol will call n answer, and last wk one of the RM called me N said sir pls be in touch with Mr.Ashok bahirwani, and all ur queries will be cleared if u follow the updates of aispa.

Sir i have not joined aispa, but i follow all the updates.(i am sorry that i cannot provide any evidence of that conversation).

Dear elderly friend, i know that We should not wash our dirty linen in public, thats why i kept quiet for a long time, but now the time has come show the dirty picture SAOL.

Its very evident by recent acts of SAOL that, it has encashed the emotions of lakhs fellow indians by using the loopholes in Law and adminstration.

The issue of withholding refunds aside, most eye-opening is the claim that a regional manager of Speak Asia directed Raghuyveer Bere to contact Ashok Bahirwani, secretary of AISPA.

To put things into context, the original email conversation I’ve quoted in this article occurred after unsuccessful attempts by Bere to resolve his situation through Speak Asia itself.

Upon contacting Speak Asia via the advertised official email communication channels and telephone numbers, Bere was told that someone from Speak Asia itself would call him back.

This did happen, but rather than work with him to resolve his issues Bere was instead directed Bere to contact Ashok Bahirwani to “clear” all of his queries.

Naturally with AISPA claiming to have nothing to do with Speak Asia’s management and Bahirwani claiming to have no association with company management himself, the pertinent question is on what authority are Speak Asia’s management deferring queries to Bahirwani and more importantly, why.

Upon receiving no reply to the above query, published on the 26th April, Bere then went on to publish another open letter to Bahirwani, published on the same date –

Dear Ashok ji

I hope ur seniority in age and experience will agree,that the people or the co whose intentions are good n true will not suppress the facts,they disclose all relevant information volunatarily, even before it was asked by others or a controversy is raised.

Sir through you i want to ask a few questions……..

We all need not to be lawyers or law makers to ask questions, but as a customer who has paid money to buy the product will have a right n responsibility to ask the relevant question. and the seller is bound to answer

Our entry into SAOL is through the purchase of 52 issues of Surveytoday, which is an e-zine, a periodical which will be delivered weekly to registered mail id.

Who is the publisher of this Surveytoday, its a simple fact that any newspaper or a magazine will contain the details of the publisher like who has published it and from where it is published.

All the time the info on our website diclosed that Harenventures p ltd is the global distributor and Kirtanji allied is the master ditributor in India.

And in recent updates on Speakasiaonlinemarketing.blogspot.com “As for Seven Rings International, they were the publisher of the E-Zine magazine which was distributed by HVP.”

why this information was disclosed earlier openly in the co website?

If this information was there on website probably some of us may not have purchased the subscription keeping sevenrings international in mind

Why a detailed invoice was not raised n sent to customers?

And today ,when we have not recieved all 52 issues of surveystoday ,why cant we claim our right as a consumer to get back the money for rest of the issues which are not delivered,regularly from Harenventures p ltd?

what is the contact no of HVP?

Why the master ditributors have not gone to court when their business was effected and was legal?( if they have approached pls give me the details)

why HVP is mum n not moving like a python who just ate a buffalo?

HVP has not introduced SAOL to us,Its SAOL which has introduced HVP to us.

people who buy the subscription of Surveytoday ,get an opportunity freely to enter in to speakasiaonline.com n participate in its activities,where no promise of income is made.

This may be legally correct. but it is like paying money to buy a remote control to get a tv free with that(remote control is useless without tv, but a tv can be viewed with out a remote.) ridiculous.

Its the need of us but for some of us a big greed which made us fools n fell for SAOL

sir u have not replied ,there on hope now u might have understood why i have not joined AISPA.

Sir pls tell me ur relation with our co, becoz the company has asked a panelist to get answers to the questions asked to co, which a RM donot have, which co couldnt reply by text, from a another panelist who joined late in February.

Sir may i ask u, why one shouldnt doubt the intention of the company, when they asked people to communicate with co on corcom@speakasiamarketing.com, later on india.south@speakasiamarketing.com, and they do not respond from more than a month, inspite of making telephone calls regulary to get a reply?

Regarding the issue of Seven Rings being credited as the publisher of the e-Zine whereas previously this was credited to Kirtanji Allied, I suppose when you’re running so many front companies and constantly chopping and changing your story to fit whatever legal explanation you’ve come with to justify your Ponzi scheme, sooner or later you’re intrinsically bound to create inconsistencies.

Inconsistencies that refreshingly at least one senior panelist hasn’t conveniently chosen to ignore in the face of ongoing empty promises of refunds and business restarts.

Increasingly it has become hard to ignore the obvious relationship between AISPA and Speak Asia. In addition to Speak Asia’s management deffering queries to Ashok Bahirwani,

  • the fact that AISPA are using the same law firm that has represented several of Speak Asia India CEO Manoj Kumar’s companies in the past
  • The “official” company blog uses doctored templates to publish updates on and increasingly has coincided with updates from AISPA
  • AISPA itself has lodged a court case in the Mumbai High Court to quash criminal investigations into Speak Asia
  • AISPA secretary Ashok Bahirwani has been interrogated multiple times by the EOW on suspicion over the extent of undisclosed involvement in Speak Asia (the details of the interrogations thus far have not been made public, although were heading towards an arrest of Bahirwani for ‘deliberately avoided the investigation agency with intention to suppress the relevant facts’ with the EOW currently seeking clarification from the Supreme Court over this course of action)
  • AISPA paid off FIR complainant Navniit Kkhosla on behalf of Speak Asia and then claimed this was a joint effort by its members
  • Bahirwani being named a ‘top official from Speak Asia’ by reporter Samarth Moray after being in communication with Bahirwani and AISPA’s lawyer, Ahmed Abdi

all point to AISPA unofficially acting as the defacto management of Speak Asia in India, offering a convenient front for Speak Asia’s management to hide behind whilst they seek to hamper investigations into the company and preventing scammed panelists from demanding their money back.

In an AISPA update dated 3rd March 2012, Bahirwani himself even stated that

AISPA will serve us (sic) an interface between the Panelists and the Company Management.

In the update Bahirwani is using the future tense but quite obviously this is already happening and has been for some time. Continuing to deny any involvement or relationship between Speak Asia and AISPA in light of all this information only seems increasingly implausible at this point. Dare I say it, even blatantly ridiculous.

As far as I know Bere still hasn’t been paid and nor has he been contacted by AISPA, Speak Asia or Ashok Bahirwani since going public with his story on the 26th April.

As I mentioned earlier, he tried to publish his story on a Facebook group frequented by Speak Asia’s panelists but it was promptly deleted.

Looking forward though I wouldn’t at all be surprised if Bahirwani (through AISPA) paid off Bere in an attempt to hush him up and settle the matter. Of course if that were to happen, like the Navniit Kkhosla payoff though, it’d naturally be unofficially not on Speak Asia’s behalf…