HC dismisses appeal of Qnet?s public relations firm

Admin   |   11 April, 2016   |   654   |   3980

Adding to Hong Kong-based public relations firm Qnet’s woes, the Bombay High Court in a recent order rejected its appeal against an order to freeze its accounts by a Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (MPID) court.

The appeal in the HC on October 13 was filed by Concept Public Relations India Limited, which acted as a media co-ordinator for Qnet. The latter is being investigated by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) for a financial scam involving ‘chain link multilevel marketing’. According to the police, people were encouraged to pay an amount and join as ‘members’ with the promise of high commissions for getting more such ‘members’ into the organisation. In the process, the appellant had admittedly received more than Rs 45 lakh as service charges. During the course of the investigation, the bank accounts of the appellant were frozen.

The counsel appearing for the company submitted that the company was only providing media and public relation services to Qnet. Being a professional services organisation, the company acted as a media service provider as proposed by Qnet, he contended, adding Concept is providing services to the other reputed organisations also and that the professional charges earned by the company cannot be frozen.

The Special Public Prosecutor told the court that the scam allegedly involving Qnet runs into hundreds of crores of rupees and is being investigated by the EOW, and that the investigating agency had sufficient material to freeze the company’s accounts.