speak-asia-online-and-admatrix-in-bed-togetherIn connection to the current drama unfolding over Speak Asia’s legal battles in India, a few days ago a rather vague description of a possible connection with a Holland based company flew onto my radar.

Reported by the Indian Express, they claimed that

the money trail of the Rs 600 crore that was allegedly transferred by the founders of the Speak Asia multi-level marketing scheme to a Singapore bank in the past 12 months has at least one account in the name of an alleged Holland-based advertisement ponzi scheme operator; giving an indication that the operation may have been on a global scale.

Interesting.

Wondering why they hadn’t just named the ‘Holland-based advertisement ponzi scheme‘, my mind immediately flashed back to a review I did back in July on AdMatrix.

Based out of Holland, AdMatrix is a matrix based recruitment driven MLM company operating in India.

With 6 out of the 7 components of the compensation plan relying on recruitment (and a six month wait to turn a profit if you don’t recruit anyone), this ultimately led me to believe that AdMatrix’s business model is unsustainable over the long term.

Getting back to Speak Asia though, despite knowing about AdMatrix, without further clarification I was hesitant to suggest it was the company in question. As far as I knew AdMatrix President Anne Wessel had nothing to do with Speak Asia Global CEO Harendar Kaur and there was no reason to suspect otherwise.

Well, that is until today when AdMatrix was publicly named and shamed as being involed.

Today, the Deccan Chronicle is reporting that

The Crime Investigation Department has conducted searches at the offices and residences of Speak Asia distributors and regional managers and seized computers and records.

According to the CID, searches were conducted in the house of Mr Charan Kumar, the regional manager of Speak Asia in the city and at his house in Motinagar in Borabanda; at Sri Ramanajeya Enterprises at Motinagar in Borabanda; and in the house of Mr Prem Kumar, a representative of Speaks Asia, at Alwal.

CID sleuths said that they were investigating another company, Ad Matrix, the office of which is in the same building as that of Speak Asia.

Now what are the odds of AdMatrix having offices in the same building as Speak Asia?

Along with the CID announcing they are investigating AdMatrix, I think it’s a safe bet to say that the mystery Holland based company in question that Harendar Kaur transferred some of the money she siphoned out of India, is none other than AdMatrix.

This raises some interesting questions, namely what exactly is the relationship between AdMatrix and Haren Ventures. Furthermore, with Anne Wessel named only as ‘the President‘ of AdMatrix, does that mean Kaur is once again the global CEO?

Obviously there’s a huge level of trust involved if Kaur was willing to transfer some of the siphoned money into the venture. With Kaur owning several affiliate companies in India itself, which are used to shift money around the company it’s entirely plausible that she also owns AdMatrix too, or at the very least is in some kind of partnership with whoever is running the show.

I guess for now we’ll have to wait till the CID have finished their investigation.

In other Speak Asia news, Indian CEO Manoj Kumar has reportedly been outed as hiding over in Dubai. Despite only being only a few hours away by plane and Speak Asia dealing with the biggest regulatory crisis it’s ever seen, Kumar has stated that he’ll be due back ‘by the end of this week‘.

With Speak Asia’s COO Tarak Bajpai expected to front court on the 5th of August (Friday), I expect Kumar’s conveniently vague scheduled arrival in India will be postponed pending any disastrous legal results.