CID raids Amway offices, seizes documents

The Hindu/September 26, 2006

Hyderbad: Teams of the State CID conducted simultaneous raids on the offices of Amway Indian Enterprises in Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati, Nizamabad, Kurnool, Kakinada, Guntur and Nellore on Monday and seized a number of documents and articles.

A case was registered under the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Scheme (Banning) Act against the company and some individuals involved in the scheme, according to a press release.

'Trapped'

The police said raids were conducted based on a complaint lodged against the company.

The complainant said that he was trapped by the members of Amway, a multi-level marketing company, who forced him to become its member and later mentally harassed to enroll members for the company. Cases had been registered against Amway in every centre.

The case details would be passed on to drug authorities, Income Tax and Sales Tax Departments for alleged violation of various laws.

Amway runs a chain scheme that forces members to join new members in order to get a high monetary incentive and it offers different models of schemes.

It is financially impossible for such a chain to work endlessly with profit and only the initial members benefit while a majority lose money as the chain is bound to break at some point, the press note stated.