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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Anubhav Plantations | 3/3 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anubhav_Plantations | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T14:10:55.825330+00:00 | kb-cron |
== Scam of 1998 == In January 1998, cheques issued by Anubhav to its investors began to bounce. Some investors reported that other than the first two payments, all the cheques had bounced. Most of these investors were middle class and retired Indian working-class people who had invested their savings in Anubhav. Their amounts varied between ₹15,000 and ₹50,000 per person. They included Indians from large commercial centers such as Mumbai as well as smaller cities and towns such as Pune, Shimla, Trichy and Sangli. On 2 December 1998, a letter was sent to all the investors of Anubhav group to come to the Woodlands hotel in Chennai to receive their long-due payments. When some of the investors landed at Anubhav's offices in Royapettah, they were met with locked doors. The company had closed down, with Natesan absconding. Some of these small investors were themselves on the brink of bankruptcy, having invested their life savings in the Anubhav group and its schemes. The letter that they had received had actually been sent by an advocate from a law firm that was following up the Anubhav group in response to court cases that had been filed against it. The letter invited them to come and check all the records and the balance sheet of the company. The event was covered by newspapers who reported that "...investors could be seen everywhere - sitting on the pavements, standing around the building, walking up and down the roads - all of them tense and worried." Many depositors who went to the group's offices in Chennai and other cities to collect their deposit amount after maturity found the doors locked, and so lodged complaints with the police. Later, thousands of investors demonstrated in front of the company's headquarters in Chennai; however, by then, the main accused, Natesan, had already gone underground.
== Aftermath == Anubhav was eventually found to have duped investors and depositors of over ₹400 crore. As details about what became known as the "Great Plantation Scam of the 1990s" began to be unveiled in the media, and it turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, Natesan's modus operandi shocked those who had held the Anubhav group in high regard. A government enquiry was subsequently launched into the Anubhav group. Its investigations revealed that the company had defrauded its investors through various plantation schemes, paying initial interests to old investors by simply channeling them from new investments by new investors. A liquidator, M. Ravindran, was appointed by the Madras High Court to try and repay its depositors at least in part. A number of investors formed their own city-based support and action groups to send in their claims, once such group being "The Pune Anubhav Investors' Action Committee (PAIAC)", formed by the 750-odd depositors of Pune who had collectively deposited ₹6 crore. Natesan, the chairman and managing director of the Anubhav Group of Companies, was subsequently caught by the police and placed in judicial custody, while the filing of the final chargesheet in his criminal case (No. 20501 of 1999) was delayed. The Madras High Court meanwhile issued a non-bailable warrant against S. Shreenivas Rao, one of the directors of the Anubhav Group of Companies. Rao had earlier moved court, requesting that the non-bailable warrant issued by additional chief metropolitan magistrate in Chennai be recalled, as he was director of Anubhav Agrotech and had nothing to do with Anubhav Plantations Ltd. In its proceedings, the High Court observed that Anubhav Agrotech Ltd. was one among the Anubhav Group, which, in January 1999, became Anubhav Agro Developers. The court observed that there was proof that Anubhav Plantation funds were diverted. The Anubhav teak plantation scam (often simply referred to as "The Teak Plantations Scam of the 1990s") is often included in the list of scams that occurred in post-liberalized India in the 1990s and has been called "The Great Plantation Scam of the 1990s". However, plantation-related frauds continue to occur in the country, with unsuspecting people lured by promises of high interests. A more recent case, that of Timber World Resorts and Plantations Ltd., which had been launched by a catering college graduate Ashwani Sud from Delhi, turned out to be a similar scam in 2009. Similarly, in 2012, hundreds of Gujaratis lost their money in a similar tree-plantation scam floated by the Ellisbridge (Ahmedabad)-based company "Golden Trees Plantation Ltd." While the first to be unearthed, the Anubhav scam was not the largest agro-based scam in India. As per the SEBI, in the subsequent Pearls Agrotech scam, Pearls Agrotech Corporation Limited (PACL) collected ₹49,100 crore (US$5.2 billion) from 5.85 crore (58,500,000) customers over 15 years by offering ambiguous investments linked to agricultural land and its development over a certain period of time. After seven years of judicial custody, Natesan was released on bail in 2007. Of the ₹1,071,233,696 (US$11 million) invested by small investors, the company ultimately refunded ₹1,004,464,461 (US$11 million) to 31,431 depositors. About ₹7 crore (US$740,379) has still not been refunded to 2,044 depositors.
== References ==