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Goldquest
second largest shareholder of NDB The company owns 12.92 percent of NDB or over 6.9 million shares, just below the biggest shareholder, Bank of Ceylon, which owns over 7.8 million shares or a 14.59 percent stake. The controversial referral marketing scheme of a Goldquest unit in Sri Lanka virtually dried up after it was exposed through the media, while the Central Bank warned the public of the dangers of easy money making schemes. Transactions by people who joined the GoldQuest referral marketing scheme went down to a trickle with only solitary cases of buying of gold coins or other products being reported following a crackdown by authorities. The Central Bank's Department of Exchange Control imposed hefty fines on individual Sri Lankan promoters of the scheme for foreign exchange fraud. It imposed fines of up to Rs. 88 million on six people promoting the scheme for violating exchange control regulations in the use of credit cards. They have appealed against the fines. GoldQuest customers paid for their own products as well as for the products of others through a company website using credit cards, which were not supposed to be used for third party payments. Customs also seized a shipment of gold coins imported by the local shipping agents of GoldQuest, SAR Shipping, on the grounds that the company had undervalued the products to avoid paying taxes. President Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga herself criticised the dangers posed by multilevel and network marketing schemes and warned the public not to be duped by enticing advertisements for such investments. The acquisition of unproductive products such as gold coins, medallions and wrist-watches would not help the country to increase the well-being of the people as claimed by the promoters of such schemes, she said. |
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