Looking back at Manoj Kumar’s 2011 promises
I’ve been following Speak Asia for a while now on BehindMLM, and whilst the coverage has mostly been negative, as expected when you’re dealing with a ponzi scheme, there have been moments of positivity.
These moments have come mostly in the form of YouTube video releases from Speak Asia’s CEO Manoj Kumar. Promising a wide variety of things, with the end of 2011 just around the corner, I thought it’d be worthwhile to hedge the credibility of Kumar going forward into 2012, based on his performance in 2011.
So how has Kumar stacked up?
1. “I’ll see you soon in Mumbai”
Back on the 30th July 2011, Manoj Kumar made a YouTube response video to the then recent arrest of Speak Asia COO Tarak Bajpai. In his address, Kumar stated
Friends, I’m so going to be back amongst all of you in India.
I, Manoj Kumar promise I will lead you from the front. I thank you, and I’ll see you soon in Mumbai.
As we all know, this never eventuated. Since fleeing the company in May, Manoj Kumar (photo right) has remained in hiding overseas and on the run from Indian authorities.
One reason constantly trotted out to explain Kumar’s absence and continued embracing of his newfound fugitive lifestyle, is that Speak Asia’s lawyers have advised him not to return to India.
Naturally the reason for this is the fear that Kumar will be arrested. Even if this did happen though, surely if Kumar wasn’t guilty of anything it’d simply be a brief matter of explaining this and discrediting the EOW’s (and any other agency’s) evidence infront of a judge and getting on with the business of running Speak Asia?
The police, no matter who they are cannot simply hold you under arrest unless they have evidence enough to charge you with something. Evidence which has to be proven in court and presented before a judge.
Surely if Kumar has ‘not committed any crimes’, as he alleges in the same video, then he’s got nothing to worry about?
Regardless, the fact remains that Kumar made a very public promise to return to India ‘soon’ five months ago now, and this was not kept.
2. ‘We will set up an Indian office’
In the same 30th July YouTube video from promise #1, Kumar also tells viewers that Speak Asia is ‘formalizing its India operations by applying for opening offices in Mumbai‘, after which the company will ‘open up five zones across India‘.
To date, Speak Asia still has no formal office in India nor were five zones ever established.
To the best of my knowledge, neither Manoj Kumar nor Speak Asia ever put out a formal explanation as to why neither of these events occurred.
3. The government of Bangladesh has ‘approved the (Speak Asia’s) business model’ and that business operations will start there in December
These two claims were made in Manoj Kumar’s October YouTube “interview” in Abu Dhabi.
The first claim is that Bangladesh has approved Speak Asia’s business model (or more likely, the product based business model they never used, but tell everyone is their business model).
As far as I can tell, no government body or official in Bangladesh has come forward and announced approval of Speak Asia’s business model.
With just one day left to go in December, neither have any official Speak Asia business operations commenced in Bangladesh either.
Black-iz reported that back in early November
Head Office will be declared when our Bangladeshi website will be launched but there is a information center at Mirpur-12 DOHS, Road No- 6, House No-114/115 (2nd floor).
In future this office could announce as a Regional office but still it is not a legal office of Speak Asia Online Bangladesh Ltd.
To date there doesn’t appear to be any official Speak Asia Bangladesh website. Infact, exactly what is going on regarding any Speak Asia operations in Bangladesh appears to be a bit of a mystery.
Persons unknown have set up the domain speakasiabd.com but this has been sitting dormant for a while now. There is also a forum (listing over 4000 member accounts) and e-ticketing support system attached to this domain.
A list of supposed Speak Asia Bangladesh management was also recently published on Facebook;
Speak Asia Online Bangladesh Ltd. Management Body:
Chairman – Cornell Nur Uddin
Global Managing Director – Mr. Ajoy Kumar Sarker
CEO Bangladesh – Major Faysol
MD Bangladesh – Md. Mahamud & many of others.
Meanwhile this Facebook page for Speak Asia Bangladesh is currently blaming some guy called ‘Mr. Raju’ for the delays and promising a Speak Asia Bangladesh start in the first fifteen days of January.
Ridwan Mahmud: Today i just got another disappointing news about speak asia….one of my friend visit speak asia’s office…. And management body told him that call center will open on first week of january and ad will publish within 10-15 january….
I think there might be some problem continues at Speak Asia bd which management body does not want to disclose to us…..For this they just provide date after date…
i think nothing will happen within 10-15 jan…. after 15th jan they will definitely give another date.. and it will continue until the problem is solved….
As we are part of speak asia they can at least share with us about their internal problem.. but i don’t know what the hell is going on their mind….
Really this is not a sign of good management ….. I thing rickshaw pulling will be more suitable job for them..
Speak Asia Online Bangladesh Ltd. (Consumer Empowerment): they are facing lots of problem what was create by mr. raju.
One thing is clear that Speak Asia is coming with all legal documents & all necessary logistic support for panelist. Real third generation people (student + educated) will be beneficiary .
The referenced ‘Mr. Raju’ they are talking about I believe is Azis Raju, a senior panelist with Speak Asia arrested earlier this year for their involvement in the company.
Either way, whatever the specific reasons – Manoj Kumar’s assurance that the government of Bangladesh approved Speak Asia’s business model and that business operations would commence in December is yet another broken promise.
4. Speak Asia has approached the UK government regarding business operations
Mentioned in the Abu Dhabi video, to date nothing has surfaced indicating any connection or relationship between Speak Asia and the UK government anywhere.
For all we know, Kumar pulled this one straight out of his behind.
5. both the UK and Bangladesh governments ‘have welcomed us (Speak Asia) with open arms‘
The complete non-existence of UK Speak Asia operations aside, the claim that the Bangladesh government has welcomed Speak Asia with open arms is obviously false.
This is evidenced by the constant delays in starting business operations there, lack of a formal office and at this stage lack of any sort of official web presence.
6. Speak Asia will be one of the ‘major corporates of India’
Again made in the Abu Dhabi video, as it stands now, Speak Asia is not even registered in India, let alone considered one of India’s ‘major corporates’.
7. “I have no investment in Mister Colibri”
This claim was made in response to my own research and several media reports made over the last week or so citing the EOW as having investigated the Manoj Kumar / Mister Colibri link and taking it seriously.
From my side of things, just over a month ago I was contacted by someone in Brazil asking me to look into Mister Colibri and the similarities between the company and AdMatrix.
Whilst researching Mister Colibri, I then came across the website ‘ColibriMakeMoney’ (now offline), run by Mister Colibri member Lilian Oliveira. Oliveira credited Manoj Kumar as being ‘an investor‘ who provided ‘the initial capital (millions of dollars invested in this project) for creating this platform and the marketing strategy’.
In a video released from locations unknown and uploaded via an anonymous YouTube account, Manoj Kumar denied Oliveira’s claims stating
They say that I have invested in Colibri, if they have worked so hard, why can’t they go to the ROC of brazil which can be done on the net also and they can easily find out that who are the promoters of the company. I am surely not the promoter.
They are local people from Brazil; I have no investment in the said company, not even a single naya paisa.
Leaving aside the fact that nobody said Kumar was a promoter of Mister Colibri, the flat denial of having an investment in the company is highly suspect, if not a straight-faced lie.
First and foremost is the fact that Manoj Kumar is listed as being on the management team of Seven Rings International.
Mister Colibri is indeed owned by Seven Rings International. This is evident from Oliveira’s claims on ColibriMakeMoney that Elia De Prisco is the creator of Mister Colibri.
Elia De Prisoco also serves on the management team of Seven Rings International.
Furthermore when paying membership fees to Mister Colibri, ‘Seven Rings International FTZCO’ appears as the merchant you are paying to:
and if you pay by credit card, Seven Rings International appears on your statement:
Undoubtedly, Seven Rings International are running Mister Colibri.
With Manoj Kumar serving on the management team of Seven Rings, he wants us to not only believe he has no investment in the company (despite Oliveira having no reason to lie about it), but also that Kumar is in no way involved with Mister Colibri?
Riiiiiiiiiight.
As you can see, the credibility of Manoj Kumar is decidedly doubtful. Time and time again he’s appeared on YouTube making wild claims about Speak Asia and more recently the EOW’s claims against himself, which directly contradict the evidence before us.
Not only that, but Kumar does so whilst remaining on the run as a fugitive hiding from Indian authorities.
In the interest of fairness, I’ll conclude by acknowledging that the lack of credibility regarding deadlines surrounding Speak Asia and associated activities is not solely restricted to the promises of Manoj Kumar.
Back in August of this year India’s Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) ‘asked (the) SFIO (Serious Fraud Investigation Office) to further investigate Speak Asia‘.
The SFIO investigation presumably began shortly thereafter. The last update we got was back in Mid November, when a MCA official stated that
The SFIO report should be out in December. The ministry (MCA) feels the culprits will be nailed after that.
Whether this report was finalised or not remains unclear and if it wasn’t, the reason(s) why is/are not currently known. As of yet though, no government agency has filed any criminal charges against Speak Asia itself in court.
The EOW’s investigation into Speak Asia as we all know is still ongoing.
Both sides of this ponzi scheme battle-royale have missed self-imposed deadlines but whilst the SFIO missing the expected December deadline to finish their report in Speak Asia, it is the multiple broken promises and completely unproven claims of CEO Manoj Kumar that stick out the most.
If what you present as fact can so easily be repeatedly proven wrong time and time again, sooner or later people will just start to automatically dismiss anything you have to say.
The way I see it, if Kumar really believed his innocence in all of this and the validity of Speak Asia’s recruitment driven business model, he’d be willing enough to answer any and all questions the authorities had of him.
Furthermore, he’d be doing so in India in full view of the public eye. Or, I suppose Kumar can just keep on doing what he’s been previously doing.
That is, make another fake YouTube account in a few days and upload a video telling us that the above promises were infact not broken, because Kumar personally doesn’t have a YouTube account to upload the videos, so how could he have possibly made the promises himself?
If Kumar doesn’t personally have a YouTube account, then of course it stands to reason that YouTube itself doesn’t exist… and by the logic neither does the internet, because Manoj Kumar personally didn’t create it.
Infact you and me don’t exist either… I know I’ve never personally met Manoj Kumar, have you?
Footnote: Whilst I appreciate that Speak Asia’s activities mostly affect Indians in India, please respect that this is an English blog. Comments in Hindi will not be published.
Neither will any comments that are deemed nonsensical or a rehash of discussion points and arguments that have already been dismissed.
Hi Oz,
I think the bail plea hearing of Ashish Dandekar and Melwyn Crasto has been now scheduled in 3rd January 2012. They have been sent to judicial custody.
This is the update posted on Kuljeet Sharma’s blog
MELVIN CRESTO
IS IN JUDICIAL CUSTODY HIS BAIL HEARING WILL BE ON
3rd JANUARY 2012
ASHISH DANDEKAR
IS IN JUDICIAL CUSTODY HIS BAIL HEARING WILL BE ON
3rd JANUARY 2012
This is the link
http://kuljeetsharma.blogspot.com/2011/12/updates-session-court-30-december-2011.html
I would accept illogical and baseless explainations rather than accept foolish jai speakasia statements.
You provide facts… and they still cry illogical and baseless.
Looks like Sanjeev is reading from the same script Manoj Kumar reads from in his YouTube videos.
Yeah that’s what I’ve heard too. Delayed till Monday.
Crasto and Dandekar spending New Years in jail… if they weren’t supporting the scam responsible for the suicide of at least one panelist now you’d almost feel sorry for them.
And in January, Elia de Prisco is gonna make a tour around Brazil,doing his lectures about Mister Colibri, “the revolution in advertising market”
Brazilian, someone shud inform the local authorities in Brazil about the scam to happen soon there.
Else just like speakasia they will send the money abroad.
SpeakAsia registered in Singapore took money from here India and transfered to Singapore.
MisterColibri are taking money from Brazil and they payment is landing in Seven Rings International India.
Both having similar modus operandi.
More news about Mister Colibri: they transfered the matrix from Dubai to Cardiff(Wales) and now they are saying that they will do an IPO on London Stock Market
Is this what Kumar meant when he mentioned the UK was going to welcome him with open arms?
sir,you have stated the facts,i agree with you,can you please tell me,supreme court had given notice to eow several times,the solmen case started in aug,what took eow 3 months to go infront of court,also they took 3 weeks to come infront of mr lohati ji.
Fact means ‘a thing done or performed’, We can’t tell anything as a fact here only with the help of the articles coming in Newspaper daily in India & also Online digital portals i.e. Oz’s research & analysis in Behind MLM, we have to wait & see until something comes as a verdict from the higher court of this land, i.e. Supreme Court of India.
Anyhow i want to appreciate Oz for his analysis & his excellent work; still i can say which might be only ‘hypothetical’ until it is proven in the court of justice. Of course, even all the works of Oz in his articles can be taken as a evidence or proof by EOW or Criminal Dept. Of Mumbai but it can become or considered truth only after proved in the court of justice as a TRUTH. I feel the matter is now only for amicable settlement i.e., already a court established to settle disputes between the parties by appointing panel of judges headed by Retd. Chief Justice Of India who is having all power to take the issue and give final verdict to solve this issue as earlier as possible. It is not only for one part of the case, it is whole part of the case since it depends on everything for SpeakAsia.
Yes, i agreed swapnil, mediation Committe appointed by supreme court of India has given the notice in different forms and EOW purposefully delayed,
if you ask Oz he may tell that all investigation needs some time to finish and EOW were at the final stage of finishing the investigation and they might be in need of more time – something like that..
But it’s not the actual answer – if you look at the work of each & every govt. officials from the start, Govt. Dept. as a whole – something fishy happens every-time with them.
In this country everything depends on money power, political power and influence over all at final stage. That is the bitter truth which has to be accepted by everyone!
The ‘Money power’ might be the ‘bribe’ which is considered to be a civilized social custom of this society among many top level govt. officials or bureaucrats of this great nation, which is really disappointing and disheartening.
If you stand dressed and cultured and as a civilized person among undressed (nude) and uncultured and uncivilized people, you will be treated or considered as a punk or a mad or a fool in this nation.
Now let’s wait & see what happens next!
TOI article confirms other scams are being investigated by the EOW:
Note the use of ‘fraudulent MLM scheme‘ to describe Speak Asia – more proof that the EOW investigation is well and truly past establishing whether or not Speak Asia is legit, and is now focusing on the Indian management structure of the company.
And once again, here is why the RBI were so ready to rock up to the Supreme Court Lahoti Committee:
They had no investigation open into Speak Asia (so how can they clear them of anything, as has been recently touted by Speak Asia’s panelists), so their appearance in a mediation dispute between Speak Asia and its panelists couldn’t have had any affect on their investigation as there was none open – unlike the other agencies requested to attend who all had open criminal investigations open into Speak Asia.
There is a complete blackout on news pertaining to Ritesh Pal’s father who was to be produced in court.
On some facebook pages post were removed mentioning that Ritesh Pal was also franchisee of Admatrix and EOW picked him up in Admatrix case.
They dont have any clarification and just come up with a fantasy everytime. Everyone there is living in a fantasy world beleiving a committe and retired judge will give report and supreme court will quash all investigations, exit payments will be done and company will restart.
Living in fantasy..!
It is totally wrong to tell that way, it means you won’t believe in Committee formed with the head of Retired Chief Justice Of India. for amicable settlement of this issue, i’m not telling anywhere that Committee will order to restart the business and Committee will give back all the payments blocked with the company and also Committee will quash all investigations. It may happen Or may not happen but somehow Committee has to submit its final report in the Court and the verdict has to come out since all matters including EOW’s criminal matter is interlinked with panelists payments. So, there has to be a final report, there has to be a final result and finally there has to be a final verdict in this case.
Kindly wait & watch. We need to accept whatever the verdict court gives. Hope you will..!
The Lahoti Committee wasn’t formed to settle anything, it was formed to explore the possibility of amicable settlement.
The fact that there isn’t enough recorded revenue for this to happen plus no government agency investigating the company having anything positive to say about them should be enough of an indication as to how that exploration went.
I do believe that the TOI article mentioning that case in Andhra Pradesh… was referring to Amway, which was recently declared illegal money circulation scheme by their high court.
So India is starting to crack down on MLM in general, and especially scams that call themselves MLM or operate in similar pyramidal manner.
Now back to SpeakAsia…
Yeah the court cases referred to aren’t Speak Asia.
Speak Asia’s attempts to stop the EOW investigating them are due back in the Mumbai High court on the 5th January.
If SpeakAsia was a legal company and has not done any fraud, then why is SpeakAsia now afraid of investigation of EOW.
First Manoj Kumar was claiming we are ready for any investigation, then when the EOW investigation began he ran away and now wants to pay exit optioners and want Navneet Khosla to take exit so investigation should stop. These blind panelist cannot see the sinster plans as why now speakasia wants investigation to stop.
Infact these sanjeevs and nithyas are all hypocrites acting as if they are innocent panelist and only want their money recovered.
But if you visit their pages and read comments they want speakasia and this recruitment and pin selling business to restart so that they can earn by fooling more downlines and getting them, but they are mistaken.
If and when that too IF, the court allows them to pay, they will pay exit optioners and fool these sanjeevs and nithyas into buying services and products that too by using little of RPs and more of cash and only then these hypocrites will learn.
Fahad Malik a Senpie of speakasia, who started speak asia consumer empowerment and is a die hard fan of speakasia has already realised this truth and posted this same question on facebook pages, that he doubts about speakasia paying all RPs.
Fahad Malik is the owner of Speak Asia Consumer Empowerment page on facebook.
SpeakAsia’s cease and desist notices does not stop either TOI’s Mateen Hafeez from publishing speakasia’s fraud news and neither stops MoneyLife from publishing more facts about the fraud. Here is the link.
http://www.moneylife.in/article/eow-sends-speak-asia-computers-laptops-hard-disks-and-cds-for-forensic-analysis/22643.html
And this statement is from MoneyLife
Currently, Manoj Kumar, the chief executive officer of the company, is absconding.
—————
Boss absconding and running away and panelist shouting, Proud to be a SpeakAsian. LOL.
Kinda amusing how senior panelists are running around telling everybody that the Supreme Court is going to order a restart of business operations, meanwhile the EOW are sending off computers for forensic analysis to further establish Speak Asia’s money laundering trail…
I don’t really see much point to Thursday’s Mumbai High Court hearing where Speak Asia hope to stop the EOW continuing their investigation.
manoj kumar has ran away according to you,but what i dont understand,why he send back his wife and son back to india?
if i was manoj kumar,i would not have done that.dont reply by saying he doesnt love his family..or his wife is also a panelist,he is cheating them also,sometimes what our mind says is not always right.
I think you dont the laws swapnil like your fellow jai speakasia’s.
His wife is not a partner anywhere and his son is a minor studying in India. Manoj Kumar knows the police cannot detained his wife and kid as they were not involved and also they might not be having a UAE business visa like Manoj Kumar.
Seems Manoj Kumar has registered a fake company in UAE and through which he is egligible for a business visa. For more on this fake company or money laundering read oz’s post, proud to be a speakasian.
@swapnil
I don’t know why Manoj Kumar sent his wife and son back to India, but the usual reason is to protect interests (the family’s interests, his own interests).
Having a family at home will make them able to protect his interests in different ways, like paying the bills and so on. They will also be able to protect more important interests, like staying in contact with lawyers or authorities. There’s lots of reasons, try to figure out some of them yourself?
Being on the run from the law is stressful. It would be even more stressful if he had a family with him, travelling from country to country and living in hotels. Sending the family home will relieve him/them from lots of stress.
The reason I know this is because I have known some criminals, and most of them have tried to separate their family life from their criminal life. It’s much easier to be in prison if you have family and relatives that haven’t been involved in anything. Most criminals will also protect some of their closest friends from being involved.
I hope you’re satisfied with the answer? Of course, I don’t know his personal motives, but I know the most general reasons for sending a family home in such situations.
Well Swapnil since you are a Marketing Research Panelist recruited by SpeakAsia let me test your iq.
SpeakAsia and Manoj Kumar have hired top most lawyers you say to fight their case. Top most lawyers as per you have told him not to come else he will be arrested, this is what jai speakasians says.
Why cant their topmost lawyer just apply for anticipatory bail, i hope u know what anticipatory bail is?.
If he loves his wife and children he can get a anticipatory bail and come back.
Or is it that even lawyers know SpeakAsia is a scam, a fraudelent scheme of money chain and they know court will not grant bail to a fraudster and that is why he is on the run.
Go and ask your fellow speakasians whether Manoj Kumar loves his wife and kid, and if yes why does he not apply for anticipatory bail and come back? Since he has biggest lawyers of India right?
I’m not a SpeakAsia member, but again Sameer added me as a SpeakAsia member in his comment, ok i think he did that for the only reason that I was telling supreme court will tell the verdict.
I still continue to tell the same (Lahoti committee will explore the possibility of amicable settlement and conclude the matter) and I feel now it is useless to show our opinions here in this portal because we won’t get any solution here in this particular portal which is only for counter-attacking Speak Asia members.
I was the wrong person coming and writing comments all these days..
Now I started to think: Is Speak Asia really a fraud Or those people coming & writing comments against Speak Asia are fraud (paid people)..?
Only they were counter attacking each & evrey person who comes and writes supporting SpeakAsia. Since they (most of them) were not associated with SpeakAsia like me but still they were so keen in Speak Asia not to start its business (firstly) as well as not to give back the money to its members (secondly).. Why like that?
Is a big question mark?
I want only second thing to happen and I don’t care in first thing (restart), I’ve already shouted at my colleagues and advised all of them more than enough for putting their hardly earned money in this Fraudulent scheme.
It seems that those people writing these comments & counter attacking innocent members seems to be bigger frauds than Speak Asia.
The answer to your question is actually another question: whose side has facts and logic, and whose side is solely backed on opinions NOT based on facts and logic?
or in other words, which side lied and made false promises?
@Nithya
This is a MLM blog, it’s not some consumer advocacy ‘I invested money in a ponzi scheme waaah where is my money?’ forum.
@Nithya Ritesh
You’re right in one thing.
You won’t get any solutions here.
We don’t solve any of the problems related to SpeakAsia.
* We can’t make them pay any faster, or make them pay at all.
* We can’t interfere with the court system.
I believe the Supreme Court has it’s next meeting 20. February or close to that date. Maybe some questions will be answered then?
Attacking opinions:
Some of us likes to engage in discussions, and this will usually include attacking opinions, too.
Most often we do this as “training”, much like “practizing communication skills”.
Personally, I was more interested in practizing other communication skills than “discussion”, but anju wasn’t interested. 🙂
We don’t have all the facts, and only Manoj Kumar himself can comment on the factors leading up to his decision. However, I’d like to point out a couple items:
* His family is not wanted… HE is wanted for questioning by EOW
In fact, I believe his family was picked up by EOW investigators and questioned, then released. Wasn’t there are report on that? I can’t find a link right now.
* One’s family can often be enrolled in something they don’t even know about, or falsely attributed. Husband can often enroll wife without her knowing as he knows all her relevant information, and vice versa. It’s almost identity theft, except for the part of “being married”.
Even when they’re NOT involved, some enthusiastic members will mis-report the item. In the US, the wife of then Bank of America’s CEO was recruited by a friend into a MLM scam. Soon news spread that both he and her are members and it somehow legitimized the scam. it’s fake, of course. But damage was already done.