Mangaluru: The Agrigold Customers and Agents Welfare Association held a press meet at the Press Club, Urwa here, on December 24.
Speaking to the mediapersons the President of All India AGCAWA, Andalu Ramesh Babu said, “Agrigold was established in Vijayawada in 1995. The company launched various schemes that promised high returns to investors. This lucrative scheme gathered funds up to Rs 7000 crore from about 32 lakh customers with the help of 10 lakh agents. But due to mismanagement and other factors the company could not give the returns promised to the customers.”
Ramesh further said, “Most of the customers and agents hail from poor family background and due to the multi-crore scam, about 25 people from Karnataka have committed suicide.” “This is ‘financial terrorism’ where cheques of Rs 700 crores have bounced,” he added.
Ramesh further said that about 40 lakh families were affected by this scam. The association had met and submitted a memorandum in this regard to the Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, who had responded quickly and had directed the CID to run an investigation against the company.
“The Company had only declared 15 properties; but investigations revealed that there were several ‘illegal’ properties under the possession of the company. When the Vijayawada office was raided the investigation team recovered property papers to the tune of 16857 acres of land, 2.7 Kg gold, 54 vehicles and Rs 1.7 lakh in cash,” Ramesh said showing the list of properties owned by Agrigold.
The Agrigold company chairman had released a press statement saying the accounts will be settled by June 30 in 2015. But nothing has happened so far, he said.
Ramesh further said, “We launched a PIL on behalf of the customers and agents and as a result the Hyderabad High Court ruled in our favour and has directed the company to sell its properties and pay the defaulted amount to the people. It is a victory for us.”
“I assure all customers and agents that their hard earned money will be given to them in 2016. Customers need not pressurize agents and agents can assure the customers,” Ramesh said.
We Mangaloreans specially the Lower Middle Class and Middle Class always fall prey to these Blade companies. Olden days I remember the Beedi, Tile factory, Cashew peeling, Coffee grading workers used to contribute their weekly installment to a private person for good returns. When our own people used cheat us then why not out siders now????