Absconding owners of Goodwin Group, A.M. Sunilkumar and A.M. Sudheerkumar, released a video clip on Monday seeking time to repay their clients even as the Thane Police are in the process of issuing lookout notices against the duo. The jewellery chain, which has shut its outlets, is facing probe for having allegedly cheated its customers who invested in its gold and other schemes.
In the video, the owner-brothers said the firm had run into some financial problems and that they were trying to raise money to pay their customers.
Sunilkumar is the managing director of the group while his brother Sudheerkumar is a full-time director. The family-run jewellery chain had introduced schemes promising 18-20 per cent returns to customers who invest with them.
“We will not be able to mobilise the funds if the police arrest us,” they said in the video released to some local TV channels in Kerala, even as investors gathered outside some of the closed outlets in Thane and Palghar to seek refund of their investments.
The Goodwin Jewellers chain shut its outlets in Thane, Palghar and Mumbai region a couple of days before Diwali, leaving hundreds of people, who had invested in their gold and fixed deposit schemes, in the lurch.
Several people who had kept gold with the jewellers, apart from participating in their other fixed deposit and investment schemes, found the outlets closed during the festival time when they were expecting disbursal of some of the promised returns, another police official said.
Besides Sunilkumar and Sudheerkumar, manager Manish Kundi has also been untraceable since then.
According to reports, until now as many as 250 complaints have been filed against the owners of the firm in Dombivli and Naupada police stations. The complainants suspect the accused have fled with all the money.
The jewellery store chain was incorporated in 1992 by Sunilkumar and Sudheeshkumar' father A.G. Mohanan. Of the jeweller's 12 branches in India, 11 are in Maharashtra and the remaining one in Kerala's Thrissur. It claims to have presence in the UAE, especially Dubai and Kuwait. Sudheeshkumar's Facebook page, with photos of them posing with celebrities and political leaders across parties, reveals that the brothers were well-connected in social circles.
