Chandigarh reseller vanishes with Rs 1.25 crore

At a time when the upcountry market is trying hard to consolidate itself in the IT reselling business, Chandigarh has been rocked by a case where a reseller is absconding with more than Rs 1.25 crore in his kitty. A prominent GID of Chandigarh, Jordan Loyal, proprietor of Fairbrother Marketing, is absconding after leaving outstanding dues of over Rs 1.25 crore. It is believed that he has packed up his bags for Switzerland with his wife and two kids.

"When we heard about this news, we could not believe as he was there in the market for more than 12 years and he had a good image in the market as well as with the distributors," remarked Chandigarh-based DS Data Spec Director, Satpal Singh.

After coming to terms with the fact that they have lost a lot of money given just on faith, resellers launched their own manhunt for Loyal and learnt that two months back he had got visas to Switzerland for himself and his family. "We traced his passport number and from there we got this information that he had applied for a Swiss visa and finished off everything just about a month back," revealed Naveen Beri, a close friend of Loyal and MD of Atlantic Technologies.

Personally to Beri, it has not been a good year for he has already lost more than Rs 8 lakh in a theft in January 2003, at his showroom. And Loyal has disappeared with his funds. "Some days ago, he came up to me and asked for a top-of-the-line IBM notebook and he never paid for that piece, so that is the only loss for me. Though I have not lost a huge amount to him, but still I feel cheated as he was very close to me and we had family relations for a long time," he lamented.

Of the estimated Rs 1.25 crore which he has taken, Loyal owes over Rs 21 lakh to SES Technologies, Rs 15 lakh to Redington, Rs 8 lakh to Neoteric Infomatique, Rs 3 lakh to Tech Pacific, Rs 2 lakh to Aditya Infotech, and the balance to other city-based resellers. Interestingly, Ingram Micro is the only major distributor, which didn't lose any money as it had stopped dealing with him for a long time.

SES, Redington, and the local trade association, Association of Computer Traders (ACT), have already filed separate police cases against Loyal. However, distributors who have lost big money to Loyal are in complete disarray considering the size of the default. "The market has reacted in a sharp way to this event. For instance, today we just had a business of less than Rs five lakh. On a normal day the overall business in the market is well over Rs 40 lakh," added a prominent reseller of Chandigarh. "We have already proposed to form a `Channel Forum' manned by vendors, press people and the channel community. This will help us to keep an eye on situations like this and we will be in a better position to stop something like this," added Singh.

ZIA ASKARI 

CHANDIGARH