speak-asia-online-logoShortly after Speak Asia global CEO Harendar Kaur siphoned off over one hundred million US dollars of panelist’s money to Singapore, she and fellow Indian CEO Manoj Kumar went into hiding.

Rumoured to be hiding out in Dubai, the last we heard from either of them was when Kumar put out a video following the arrest of Chief Operating Officer, Tark Bajpai.

The video was released in late July and in it Kumar promised Speak Asia’s panelists that he would be ‘back in Mumbai soon‘.

That never happened.

Instead, as investigations and legal developments against Speak Asia continued in India, Kaur and Kumar remained in hiding overseas. With both CEOs unwilling to face the Indian authorities and regulators, instead they opted to pull the strings from the safety of international borders.

International borders which finally, if the news reports are to believed, might finally come crumbling down around them.

Could this be the end of the silly cat and mouse nonsense Speak Asia’s management have been playing with the Indian authorities for some months now?

With Harendar Kaur’s base of business operations being Singapore, the Daily Bhaskar are reporting that India’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID) are setting their sights on Kaur’s business interests there.

The CID team is getting ready to proceed to Singapore for investigation and then take the key persons into custody.

The cid has also sought the help of union home ministry in this regard.

Along with the ‘union home ministry’, the Daily Bhaskar are also hinting at possible involvement of the International Criminal Police Organization, otherwise known as Interpol.

For now the main goal appears to be seizing Harendar Kaur’s business assets and retrieving as much of the panelists money she ran off with as possible.

With Interpol’s involvement however and the United Arab Emirates, India and Singapore all being member states of Interpol – arrests of Kumar and Kaur could very well be a possibility.

Obviously we’ll have to wait and see how these recent announcement develop and whether or not the CID can actually convince Interpol to get involved.

Meanwhile, over in fantasy land, Speak Asia themselves have been constructing an entirely alternative reality for themselves.

In an allegedly official free Blogspot blog titled ‘SpeakAsiaOnline.Marketing‘, apparently run by Speak Asia’s Corporate Marketing department (probably the only people still getting paid by Harendar Kaur), the company claims

We are at the moment engaging in various activities and actions that will ensure that we return to normalcy as soon as possible.

These activities include the approaching of ‘various authorities concerned to explain the business model and their approval on it‘ and the implementation of ‘ methodology for exercising the exit options‘.

Explanation of the business model and exit options, haven’t we heard this all before? Are Speak Asia’s management really that delusional to think a mere explanation of their painfully obvious pyramid scheme business model will make all this go away?

And as for exit options… does hearing that one of your company’s top priorities is enabling an option for everybody to demand a refund and leave the company really inspire any sense of confidence?

Naturally I can’t help but call into question the authenticity of the Speak Asia Marketing blog. Why would a company sitting on hundreds of millions of US dollars opt for a free blog domain?

Surely the Indian authorities would have no trouble getting Google to shut it down if Speak Asia broke any online sanctions currently in place against them.

AISPA secretary Ashok Bahirwani however claims the blog is authentic. In a statement published yesterday Bahirwani wrote

I have got confirmation that the Blog ‘Speak Asia Online Marketing’ is indeed a company initiative.

The letter posted through this blog site is authenticated to be from the desk of our Global CEO Mrs. Harendar Kaur.

Personally I think this is a bit of a weak connection seeing as anyone could have doctored up a letter and published it. With Speak Asia’s official domain still seized however, who knows.

Quite the sad state of affairs for a company that once published their own flashy videos and ads all over print and television media to be reduced to a mere free blog service.

Although with Harendar Kaur almost certain that she’s not going to make any further money from Speak Asia’s panelists and the no doubt expensive lawyer fees eating into her siphoned off money, I guess every penny from here on out counts.