‘All our savings': Indian investors duped out of US$100 million in Ponzi scheme
Published: 4:28pm, 18 Feb 2025 Thousands of investors in India are scrambling to recoup nearly US$100 million after they were caught in a Ponzi scheme that duped them into making short-term investments promising high returns, according to a police statement and multiple victims. Indian police arrested two individuals on Saturday after a case was filed against Falcon Invoice Discounting, which promised returns of up to 22 per cent by claiming to connect depositors with the likes of Amazon and biscuit maker Britannia.
Falcon collected 17 billion rupees (about US$196 million) from nearly 7,000 investors since 2021 but has repaid only half, according to a statement from police in the southern state of Telangana.
Ankit Bihani, a New Delhi-based jeweller, met with 50 other investors last week to discuss measures, including legal remedies, to recoup the collective 500 million rupees they said they had lost.
'Most of them [investors] got to know about the investing platform through social media and invested in it,' Bihani said. Falcon Invoice Discounting, which claimed to connect depositors with Amazon, has left investors scrambling to recoup their losses. Photo: AFP
Falcon used the money from new investors to pay out older ones and diverted the remaining funds to various shell entities, the police said. Authorities are hunting for Amardeep Kumar, Falcon's founder and the main accused, a source said.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
HKFP
7 hours ago
- HKFP
EU bans Chinese firms from major state medical equipment contracts
The European Union on Friday banned Chinese firms from government medical device purchases worth more than five million euros (US$5.8 million) in retaliation for limits Beijing places on access to its own market. The latest salvo in trade tensions between the 27-nation bloc and China covers a wide range of healthcare supplies, from surgical masks to X-ray machines, that represent a market worth 150 billion euros in the EU. 'Our aim with these measures is to level the playing field for EU businesses,' the bloc's trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic said. 'We remain committed to dialogue with China to resolve these issues.' In response, China accused the EU of 'double standards'. 'The EU has always boasted that it is the most open market in the world, but in reality, it has gradually moved towards protectionism', foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said at a regular press briefing. 'Under the guise of fair competition (the EU) actually carries out unfair competition, which is a typical case of double standards.' The European Commission said in a statement the move was in 'response to China's longstanding exclusion of EU-made medical devices from Chinese government contracts.' Brussels said just under 90 percent of public procurement contracts for medical devices in China 'were subject to exclusionary and discriminatory measures' against EU firms. In addition to barring Chinese firms from major state purchases, 'inputs from China for successful bids' would also be limited to 50 percent, it said. Over the last three years, Brussels and Beijing have come into conflict in a number of economic sectors, including electric cars, the rail industry, solar panels and wind turbines. The decision on medical devices comes at a time of heightened trade tensions with President Donald Trump's United States, which has imposed customs surcharges on imports from all over the world, including Europe. The EU has decided to take a tougher stance on trade in recent years, adopting a vast arsenal of legislation to better defend its businesses against unfair competition. In April 2024, the commission opened an investigation into Chinese public contracts for medical devices, the first under a new mechanism introduced by the EU in 2022 to obtain better access to overseas state purchases. China, on the other hand, accuses Europe of protectionism. After a year of negotiations, the commission, which manages trade policy on behalf of the 27 member states, said it had failed to make any progress with China. 'The measure seeks to incentivise China to cease its discrimination against EU firms and EU-made medical devices and treat EU companies with the same openness as the EU does with Chinese companies and products,' Brussels said.
Asia Times
15 hours ago
- Asia Times
Chinese state-owned airlines join price war in national mission
Chinese state-owned airlines have joined an intensifying price war, although unwillingly, amid challenges including local passengers' weakening spending power and rising market competition. Air China, Southern Airlines and Eastern Airlines have been facing huge losses for five years since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020. Although China canceled all epidemic rules in early 2023, the three firms still recorded net losses in the past two years. They carried more passengers last year than in 2023, but had to lower air ticket prices due to rising competition from budget airlines and China State Railway Group, the country's high-speed train operator. The price war is intensifying this year. Many Chinese airlines now offer domestic round-trip tickets at about 200 to 300 yuan (US$28 to US$42), as it is a low season before the summer holidays. Round-trip tickets to remote cities are 80- 90% off, while those to key cities like Beijing are 40-50% off. Budget airlines such as Spring Airlines and Juneyao Air are growing fast in this price war. a unit of the People's Daily, reported in late May that Chinese airlines have started offering significant discounts to customers. For example, a ticket for a round trip between Chengdu and Kunming costs only 222 yuan, and between Chengdu and Haikou, it costs 237 yuan. Kunming and Haikou are famous for their natural attractions. A Chongqing-based writer said air tickets departing from Chengdu are about 70% off on average from the high season. He said a Beijing-Sanya round trip ticket is only 230 yuan, down from 2,000 yuan during the Spring Festival in late January. He said the competition intensifies as Chinese airlines keep opening new routes this year. Citing Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) data, Xinhua reported in March that 38 airlines will open 640 new domestic flight routes this year, connecting key cities such as Chongqing, Changsha and Tianjin with tourism cities in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. The CAAC also allowed 193 local and foreign airlines to add 22,946 new international passenger and cargo flights per week in 2025, or 33% more than in the same period last year. These new routes cover 78 foreign countries, 57 along the Belt and Road. 'Do you think the three state-owned airlines don't want to make a profit?' a Shandong-based columnist called Xiao Song says in an article. 'They have their difficulties.' 'Despite losing money, some routes had to be launched for political reasons, such as those to Xinjiang and Tibet, and those to African and South American countries,' he said. He added that budget airlines and state-owned airlines operate their businesses differently. For example: Spring Airlines targets low-cost tourists who travel to remote cities, while state-owned airlines mainly compete in key cities. Juneyao Airlines offers one-day trips for businesspeople at prices lower than those of the high-speed railway. Budget airlines mainly use Airbus A320, which can fly up to 12 hours per day, compared with state-owned airlines' 10 hours. State-owned airlines deploy domestically some of their long-range Boeing 787 planes, which burn more fuel than narrow-body aircraft. State-owned airlines operate less efficiently than private firms. He said these are reasons why budget airlines can make a profit and pay their pilots 15,000 yuan per 90 flight hours, while state-owned airlines lose money and can only offer their pilots 10,000 yuan. He said state-owned airlines now realize these problems and try to provide more low-cost packages. In 2024, the top seven Chinese airlines, including state-owned and private ones, recorded combined revenues of 587 billion yuan, up 13.6%. Spring Airlines was the most profitable, with a net profit of 2.27 billion yuan. In fact, Air China, Eastern Airlines, and Southern Airlines successfully narrowed their net or before-tax losses last year from 2023. The number of passengers carried was 155 million (+23.8%) for Air China, 141 million (+21.6%) for Eastern Airlines, and 165 million (+16%) for Southern Airlines. According to the CAAC, the total number of flight passengers grew 5.8% to 246.8 million in the first four months of 2025 compared with last year. Currently, the central government does not intend to stop the price war or reduce competition in the airline industry. 'The decline in air ticket prices is good news for the tourism market as it can effectively boost the number of tourists and create growth for related industries such as hotels, catering, transportation and retail,' a Yunnan-based writer says in an article. She thinks the trend will also help diversify the tourism market, as new and small tourism sites can emerge. However, Hsieh Chin-ho, a Taiwanese commentator, said the falling prices of air tickets and hotels will worsen China's deflationary problem, which was caused by the burst of the country's property bubbles several years ago. Hsieh said China's consumer price index (CPI) decreased by 0.1% year-on-year in May, and its producer price index (PPI) dropped by 3.3% year-on-year, showing weak domestic consumption. He said a vicious cycle created by weakening consumption and falling property prices could further drag down the Chinese economy – resulting in a lost decade of slow or negative GDP growth, such as was experienced by Japan from the 1990s to the 2010s. Read: China's fast-growing high-speed railway network faces reality
South China Morning Post
15 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Why critics of the Hong Kong dollar peg are getting it wrong
In financial markets, the Hong Kong dollar is known as a 'widow-maker', a ruinous trade that inflicts painful losses on successive generations of investors. While betting against Japanese government bonds has been the most notorious widow-maker trade, challenges to Hong Kong's currency peg to the US dollar date back to the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis and continue to attract speculators even though the trade has yet to pay off. As recently as May 5, the Hong Kong dollar – which has been pegged to its US counterpart since 1983 and confined to a narrow trading band of HK$7.75-7.85 to US$1 since 2005 – threatened to break through the strong end of the band, as a result of a sharp fall in the US dollar amid concerns about the perceived safe haven status of US assets. This forced the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the city's de facto central bank, to intervene aggressively by selling the local currency, unleashing a torrent of liquidity. Coupled with a surge in inflows into Hong Kong's buoyant stock market , this drove down interbank rates. By the end of May, the one-month Hibor – which serves as a benchmark rate for most residential mortgage loans – had fallen to 0.5 per cent, down from 4 per cent at the end of April. However, the sharp divergence in borrowing costs between Hong Kong and the United States has caused the local currency to weaken dramatically , leaving it perilously close to the weak end of the band. This has fuelled demand for 'carry trades', whereby investors borrow the Hong Kong dollar to buy the US dollar and pocket the interest rate differential. If the HKMA steps in again, this time to defend the weak end of the band, it will drain liquidity from the local market and push up borrowing costs. A renewed surge in Hibor threatens, in the face of a weak economy in desperate need of a sustained period of loose financial conditions. For speculators and critics of the peg, this shows that the disconnect between a US-led monetary policy cycle and a mainland China-driven economic cycle has become untenable.
