The Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) has arrested 102 people for their alleged involvement in illegal network business.

A CIB team made the arrests following a raid at Siddhartha Foodland, Baneshwor on Sunday evening when members of QNet were holding a meeting on its operation, the CIB said.

The CIB has filed cases on fraud charge against 14 people identified as the active members of the network business. They were operating under QNet Networking Company and had been collecting money from its members.

The case has been filed against Prakriti Budathoki; Shweta Basnet; Shreejana Singh; Ankita Shrestha; Bikalpa Shrestha; Kshitz Poudel; Naresh Malla; Om Gurung; Bishan Gurung; Kiran Joshi; Sumit Manandhar; Saurab Goyenka; Sumit Shrestha, Pramesh Manandhar, said the CIB.

“The company had been collecting Rs350,000 from each member,” said CIB Spokesperson SP Mira Chaudhary. “They have been offering its members 10-year tour packages to various countries, including Thailand, Malaysia, the UAE.”

SP Chaudhary said the company does not have any legal registration.

The CIB estimates the company has collected over Rs35 million. 

QNet is a part of the Hong-Kong-based company operated by QI Group that was banned in Nepal by Home Ministry in 2003.

The group aims to establish a business in pyramid structure wherein members are required to enrol more members under the scheme and are provided commission for the task.

The CIB is digging into transaction details of those arrested. Apart from the 14 against whom case has been filed, the rest of the people were released on bail.

The members of the QNet come from various backgrounds. At least 20 of them are engineers, while some of them are chartered accountants.

Millions of Nepalis have been cheated by multi-level marketing companies over the past decade. Among the major companies that swindled billions of rupees of the common people’s money are Unity Life International, Herbo International, Gold Quest International, Crystal Vision International, Best World Business Link and Robious International. Unity Life International duped around Rs4 billion.

After the ban, around two dozen such companies filed a writ petition in the SC on May, 2010, against the government’s decision to scrap the Directives on Network Marketing of Commodities.

However, the Supreme Court on March 28, 2012, upheld the government’s decision, declaring the multi-level marketing business illegal. A division bench of Justice Sushila Karki and Justice Bharat Raj Upreti had issued the order, stating that the public might get duped, with a domino effect on health and wealth of the people.

In its verdict, the apex court had given an option of allowing the business through a proper law, but had also directed the government to hold a study on the negative impacts of the business on the common people and its benefits to the economy. However, no such study has so far been carried out.