5 Speak Asia scam accused granted bail

A local court Thursday granted bail to the five accused in the alleged Speak Asia scam on certain conditions. The five, including Speak Asia's Chief Operating Officer in India (COO) Tarak Bajpai, were asked to furnish surety of Rs three lakh each. They have also been barred from traveling abroad and asked to surrender their passports.
    
Other accused to get bail are Financial Manager Ravi Khanna, the web portal's technicians Rajeev Malhotra and Rais Khan and panelist Deepankar Sarkar.

Commenting on the bail, CEO India of Speak Asia, Manoj Kumar, said, "We have full faith in the judicial wisdom and fairness of our country. We are confident that we shall be absolved of all accusations levied against us. We are also in dialogue with RBI to allow us to make payments to all our panelists who have stood firmly with us at the time of need.

This will also help us to implement our exit policy which would enable those panelists who wish to end their association with the company," he said.
    
Police had alleged that Speak Asia had promised lucrative returns through a multi-marketing pyramid model. The firm allegedly duped over 12 lakh investors, also called as panelists as well as other members to the tune of Rs 1,300 crore, by assuring them attractive commission if they did the company's job and introduced new members.
    
The Economic Offences wing of Mumbai Police Crime Branch also recently arrested Rahul Shah, vice president of Tulsient Information System Pvt Ltd, a business process outsourcing (BPO) that looked after Speak Asia's survey as well as financial affairs. Shah is still in custody, police said.
    
Police alleged that Tulsient looked after financial affairs of Speak Asia and played an important role in the controversial company's online surveys.