(Yicai Global) Dec. 22 -- The China Consumers Association has called for a criminal investigation into Coolqi Beijing Technology Co. and its principal executives after receiving complaints about the bike-sharing firm.

The association said yesterday that it submitted a report about suspected criminal activities to the relevant public security organs.

The goods and services monitoring group has received letters from Coolqi bike users who accused the company of fund-raising fraud and claimed that the firm intentionally made it difficult or impossible for them to get a refund of their deposits and funds in their prepaid accounts. Consumers have mailed the CCA more than 2,000 complaints.

Coolqi has closed its online, telephone and other refund channels since August and has failed to return hundreds of millions of yuan in user deposits, the CCA said in an open letter on Dec. 12

A deposit is the personal property of the consumer, and nobody else has the right to dispose of it, the open letter said. Coolqi has misappropriated a large amount of consumer deposits and made no response to requests to reclaim them, the letter said. It failed to provide genuine contact information to solve the issue, and this is a serious violation of the law, the CCA said.

That CCA letter requested Coolqi and Zhang Fuzhi, its legal representative, Bi Yan, its supervisor and Gao Weiwei, its chief executive, to contact the association, provide detailed information on the deposits, cooperate in investigations and actively handle the problem in accordance with the law.

The association had previously asked for explanations from Coolqi in March and September, but the bike-sharing group has not replied. The CCA has sent staff members to Coolqi headquarters in Beijing's Tongzhou district to conduct an onsite check and they found the office was empty.

The CCA commissioned a local consumer protection group to examine a site in Chengdu in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan that Coolqi said it set up to refund deposits. That investigation found that the premises was a private business, and that Coolqi did not have a rental agreement with the owner or any staff there. Coolqi misled hordes of consumers and about 100 of them went to Chengdu to ask for a refund in a single day.