Controversial Canadian-Indian businessman Sri Ram Tumuluri was recently arrested by the Dubai police – as part of a financial corruption investigation – over several bounced cheques. He remains on bail and under investigation in the Middle Eastern state.
The Government has said that the investigation is ongoing and that Tumuluri will be banned from the country if he doesn’t settle his debts.
Following his arrest, this report takes a deeper look into the murky world of Ram Tumuluri’s business dealings across the world.
The journalist’s killing:
The report mentions how Celebrated Malta journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was killed in October 2017 in a car bomb near her home within weeks after announcing that she would be exposing several financial scandals of controversial Canadian-Indian businessman Sri Ram Tumuluri, spent several years investigating Ram Tumuluri till her tragic murder.
Although Maltese national brothers George Degiorgio and his brother Alfred have confessed to the killing but close associates of Daphne Caruana Galizia have said the Malta authorities have not investigated the murder properly and several questions remain unanswered.
The murdered journalist had written in detail about the financial crimes of Sri Ram Tumuluri. The journalist, who had also worked on Panama Papers scandal, had written dozens of articles on Sri Rama Tumuluri and was set to release a big story when she was killed. Her assassination rocked Malta.
Consistent pattern:
In all his operations, Ram Tumuluri has a consistent pattern: he presents investors with deals he does not himself have the funds to invest in; portrays them as easy money opportunities; sets up an opaque offshore corporate structure; pulls in his associates and past business connections; obtains partial funding for the project; walks away from the project with any funds invested, having purposefully failed to file accounts; and moves on to an alternative project.
By maintaining a low level of tangible assets (i.e. renting rather than owning property), even in litigious situations, the plaintiffs are unable to make claims against any significant resources owned in Tumuluri’s name.
An analysis of public records shows Tumuluri has consistently failed to file annual returns in companies he incorporated in India, the US, Canada and Singapore thereby not accounting for where the funds have gone.
Ram Tumuluri was born in the Indian city of Hyderabad to Satynarayana Tumuluri and Bharti Tumuluri, a Brahmin middle class family with no business history. Ram Tumuluri has claimed he received an undergraduate degree from Osmania University in Culinary Arts.
Osmania University said it does not offer culinary courses. The controversial businessman has claimed that he went to the London School of Economics (LSE) but the LSE administration has said it has no record of Ram Tumuluri ever enrolling in any discipline or ever graduating from the prestigious institution.
