CEZA suspends firm’s license to operate over investment scam
Credit to Author: The Manila Times| Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2019 09:01:25 +0000
THE Cagayan Economic Zone Authority (CEZA) suspended the license to operate of Golden Millenial Quickpay Inc. Ltd. (GMQ) and its authorized service provider Grapefruit Service Inc. pending investigation into its reported investment scam targetting Chinese investors.
Last week, 277 undocumented workers of Grapefruit were arrested by joint operatives of the Bureau of Immigration-Fugitve Search Unit and Philippine National Police (PNP).
Mike Gerald David, CEZA spokesman and Chief Fintech and Cryptocurreny Business Officer, said CEZA was thoroughly investigating the case.
He noted, however, that CEZA did not allow its licensees to conduct business activities or offshore virtual currency exchanges in any foreign country like China which prohibits such business activity.
“There were 277 staff of the whole GMQ group that were taken. The allegation was, these were undocumented personnel. Apparently, what we do have, but subject to investigation, 106 of them are registered with us which leaves the rest of the 277 for us to investigate,” said David.
“With regards to the investment scam, we are investigating this, at how it was done because we are licensing GMQ to operate an exhange. The exchange is like the Philippine Stock Exchange where a lot of transactions could happen and perhaps there are times that there are investments that are misguided, misprepresented, but in our case, we don’t know how the exchange can perpetuate the fraud,” he said. ANNA LEAH E. GONZALES