tvi-express-logoLesotho is

a landlocked country and enclave, surrounded by the Republic of South Africa.

It is just over 30,000 km2 (11,583 sq mi) in size with a population of approximately 2,067,000.

Or to put it another way, Lesotho is probably too small to rate on most people’s radars (myself included). Admittedly I’d never even heard of the country today, when the Central Bank of Lesotho outlawed TVI Express labelling it a ‘pyramid scheme‘.

Asserting that TVI Express is ‘operating in Lesotho in violation of the law’, the Central Bank assessed TVI against the country’s ‘Financial Institutions Act’ and found that

Its business operations place substantial emphasis on recruitment of participants to it.

In this respect, the scheme offers lucrative incentives to the participants, calculated primarily on the basis of the number of participants or members that have been recruited into it.

It is evident that these recruitment-based incentives serve as a bait to attract potential participants into joining the scheme, with the prospect of making easy money by recruiting others.

In the whole, selling of purported products or services is a small component of the business model in the scheme and therefore designed to defraud members of the public.

With no product and a compensation plan that only pays people when they recruit someone to TVI Express, how anyone could come to any other conclusion is beyond me. So kudos to the Central Bank for investigating and coming to the only logical conclusion possible.

TVI Express being declared illegal in Lesotho continues TVI Express’ problems in Africa. Currently the scheme is banned in South Africa and has been facing regulatory action in Namibia for some months now.

Despite putting up a strong defense and unity upon first hearing of the bans, TVI Express appears now to have all but abandoned its African members. Instead, the company continues to pursuit new markets in countries it hasn’t been banned in yet.

Take for example the recent TVI Express launch in the Philippines.

How long will that last? Not long if Africa is anything to go by.

It’d be great to see regulatory bodies for once take a proactive stance on the various pyramid schemes going around. In the case of the Philipines, it appears to be the ‘Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas‘, otherwise known as the Central Bank of the Philipines.

Wake up Philipines! One of the largest pyramid schemes in modern times just set up show right under your noses and you appear to be asleep at the wheel!