Members of Agel Vietnam, a US-based multi-level marketing (MLM) group has been on a knife’s edge over the last week when hearing that the group has officially withdrawn from Vietnam. Tens of thousands of people have lost their money because of the decision.
In fact, the signs of collapse appeared three months ago. On March 8, Nguyen Thi Thu Ha, a member of the pyramid distribution scheme of Agel Vietnam in HCM City, unexpected received a call from Thu, also a member of Agel Vietnam in Hanoi, who said that Agel Vietnam had shut down.
Immediately, the information had been spread out among the members, who then got paniced. They tried to contact each other to ask about the reasons behind the decision to shut down business. However, no one had enough sufficient information to give answers to the members.
People tried to look for Hoang Hai Yen, Director of Agel Vietnam, who was also the person who made the decision to close the company. However, Yen’s phone was on the turn-off mode, or she did not answer the calls.
The closing of Agel Vietnam, which has a headquarter at No 73 Trang Thi Street in Hanoi and a southern office at No 14 Ky Dong in HCM City, has caused big losses to the members of the whole network.
Chu Thi My Huong, a member of Agel Vietnam in HCM City, one of the people, who have highest incomes in the network, said that the total loss of the members of her network is estimated at 3.5 billion dong, which includes 2000 boxes of products and 300 million dong in commissions.
Huong said that she has lodged an appeal to the US Agel Group, but the group said that it did not cause the losses and denies the responsibility for this, saying that Agel Vietnam must take responsibility in this case.
The members of Agel Vietnam’s network not only have suffered losses because they have lost products and commissions, but also because they cannot ask for products back from the members, who borrowed products before.
Huong said that she has lost 100 boxes of products (1.45-1.65 million dong for each), which means she has lost 200 million dong.
The whole network of Agel Vietnam has become chaotic.
Agel Vietnam’s members have been gathering, planning to raise a lawsuit against the company’s director. Letters of denunciation have been sent to the Ministries of Planning and Investment, Industry and Trade, the Competition Administration Department, the market management agency and to the police.
Ha Manh Cuong, a member of Agel’s network, said that in the coming week, the people in the network headed by him, will send 50-60 petitions to the Hanoi People’s Court, while each petition will represent a group of several or tens of people. As such, about several hundreds of people will raise the lawsuits.
In the letters of denunciation, people accused the director of Agel Vietnam of making corrupt use of her position to appropriate assets of other people, cheating and hiding debts, which has caused the collapse to the system and brought loss to distributors.
Yen has left to work for another pyramid seller.
The information about Agel has stirred up the public and other MLM systems in Vietnam. To date, more than 20 MLM companies have been licensed, while tens of other companies have brought products to Vietnam to sell, but they still do not have investment licenses. Meanwhile, experts have also said that it is the right time to review the MLM model in Vietnam.
VBN on Jul 2 2011
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