The Enforcement Directorate this week attached assets worth over Rs 757 crore of network marketing company Amway India under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Amway India has been accused of running a multilevel marketing scam. The attachment of properties belonging to Amway India by the Enforcement Directorate is the culmination of years of hard work. There has been a lengthy and thorough investigation into MLM companies by some police officers. The name of IPS VC Sajjanar is also prominent in this.
Charu Sinha, who kept the pressure on Amway, was among the other IPS officers who probed Ghajan in this case. Apart from him, as Kurnool Superintendent of Police, K. Raghuram Reddy had arrested Amway India Managing Director William Scott Pickney and Dwarka Tirumala Rao. No other state has seen a case against Amway like undivided Andhra Pradesh. VC Sajjanar, who is now the Managing Director of Telangana State Road Transport Corporation (TSRTC), was a young SP in 2005. When he was on a tour of Hubli, he saw billboards advertising products of a company called Japan Life.
Speaking to The Indian Express, VC Sajjanar says, “I wanted to know about it and I asked my friends about the hoardings. It seemed to me that all was not well. The next day, without revealing that I am a police officer, I attended a meeting organized by distributors where they were telling people how to make money quickly by becoming a distributor and adding members.”
Sajjanar said, “On August 14, 2006, I issued a press release appealing to the public not to fall into the trap of MLM companies. That appeal led to the registration of the first actionable and most detailed FIR against Amway at a police station dedicated to the investigation of economic offences.”
The IPS officer said that during the investigation, it was found that the mutual relations between each other had started getting worse due to the linking of people with MLM companies. Family members and relatives were turning against each other and filing divorce petitions or police cases, or quarreling with each other in an attempt to enroll more members to get commissions. VC Sajjanar says, “Families were breaking up and the social fabric was breaking apart. People sold or mortgaged properties to invest in MLM companies and lost everything.”
Out of total assets of Rs 757.77 crore attached under PMLA, immovable and movable assets are worth Rs 411.83 crore. Investigation revealed that the company is running ‘pyramid fraud’ under the guise of direct selling multilevel marketing networking.