On October 17, Speak Asia's Senior Counsel Gopal Subramaniam presented a false depiction of the company's business model to the Supreme Court of India. He spoke during a hearing for a public interest petition filed by Speak Asia panelists.

The Reserve Bank of India did not appear, a no-show that angered Justice Dalveer Bhandari. He publicly criticized the Ministry of Finance and the RBI for not filing their reply affidavit. Speak Asia later celebrated this rebuke in a press release, interpreting the judge's frustration as a favorable outcome for their case.

Subramaniam compared Speak Asia to eBay. He told the court the company offered consumers a superior way to buy goods at discounted prices, earning reward points. This implied Speak Asia operated as a legitimate e-commerce platform, not the pyramid scheme it was.

Speak Asia's business model never changed from its inception in May 2010. Authorities seized the company's servers while it still ran the same recruitment-focused compensation plan. This original model attracted between 1.2 and 1.8 million members. The plan made no mention of product purchases or consumer activity. It functioned as a pyramid scheme from the start.

Subramaniam presented a business model to the Supreme Court that did not exist. He claimed the company had established an office in India, a plan that remained unfulfilled. He dressed unbuilt infrastructure as fact.

This was not a minor misstatement. The Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) and Criminal Investigation Department (CID) had initiated multiple criminal investigations into Speak Asia. Significant fraud allegations surrounded the company. The entire regulatory conflict stemmed directly from the original business model Subramaniam misrepresented in court.

Providing a fabrication about company operations to India's Supreme Court constitutes perjury. Subramaniam knew, or should have known, that Speak Asia's compensation plan had not transformed into his description. He offered fiction as fact to a judge, who, unfamiliar with the scheme's specifics, had no reason to doubt the court's own counsel. Justice Bhandari's frustration at the RBI's absence was justified, but the true deception occurred directly before him, delivered by the company seeking judicial relief.

Speak Asia operated with a compensation plan based solely on recruitment, not e-commerce, since May 2010.