80 lodge report against gold investment scheme

Investor says Royal Gold investment scheme was convincing with use of 'royal emblem' and promotional material featuring photos of a 'Datuk' and member of royalty.

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PETALING JAYA: Some 80 victims of a gold investment scheme have lodged a police report at the district police headquarters here today, claiming they have not received any returns as promised.

The police reports were filed against the scheme called Royal Gold, with one investor, Patmanathan Menon, saying he started to invest in the scheme since June 2014.

“I was promised 15% every month on my gold investment including capital. I have since invested over RM200,000,” Patmanathan said to the media present.

Patmanathan (pic, below) said he had been convinced to place his investment after seeing that the company used a “royal emblem” and also showed the photo of a “Datuk” and a member of the royalty on booklets and leaflets.

“I thought the investment opportunity was genuine and within the law as they had the ‘royal emblem’,” he said.

Another man, Thomas Zakariah, who had invested more than RM50,000 in the scheme, said he too had stopped receiving any returns on his investments made since 2014.

“They offered me a chance in the gold conversion programme, after they had stopped giving us returns, asking me if I wanted to change to other investment programmes under Royal Gold,” he said.

Thomas added that he made the police report to warn others not to fall into the same problems with such investment schemes.

Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng (right) holding one of the police reports, as an investor shows his Royal Gold Investment certificate.

Segambut MP Lim Lip Eng, who accompanied the victims of the Royal Gold scheme to the police station, said there were 1,000 investors nationwide who had also invested in Royal Gold.

“Over 100 police reports have been made against Royal Gold since 2015, but nothing has been done by the authorities,” the DAP man said.

“We want this case to be investigated using the Penal Code, the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM) and the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Council (MACC),” he said.

Lim claims more than RM340 million has been lost by investors in the Klang Valley alone. -FMT