The Indian government committee set up to investigate the $10 billion Pearls collapse has called for details of Australian -assets bought by the Ponzi scheme, including property -locations and valuations, in a sign it is moving to have such assets frozen. 
Following revelations by The Australian in recent months, the Lodha committee, run by India's former chief justice Rajendra Mal Lodha, has written to class action lawyers seeking information in its bid to recover funds for burned investors.
The committee has written to Queensland barrister, corporate fraud investigator and former Australian Securities & Investments Commission investigator Niall Coburn, who is preparing to run a class action against Pearls, or PACL, on behalf of tens of thousands of Indian investors.
"The committee has asked us for all the assets in Australia bought by the Pearls group and the value of those assets and I have provided that information," Mr Coburn said.
It is seeking details of assets and properties in Australia owned by Pearls or in which it has an interest, "which can be sold by the committee to refund the investors-/customers" of Pearls.
The Lodha committee has also approached The Australian for -information. The Pearls Group, founded by Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, who is now in jail, raised money from an estimated 50 million Indians under the pretence of investing the money in land parcels.
Instead, new investments were used to pay interest to existing investors before it collapsed.
Pearls established an Austral-ian arm on the Gold Coast in 2009 and sent $130 million here, much of which went to fund the $62m purchase, and subsequent $20m refurbishment, of the Sheraton Mirage at Main Beach.
Just three weeks before his jailing in   January, Bhangoo transferred as a "gift" a $2.5m home in the inner-eastern Melbourne suburb of Mont Albert to his daughter and her husband.
Another of Bhangoo's daughters and her husband list as their address an opulent waterfront home in the Gold Coast suburb of Hope Island, which records show was bought by Pearls Infrastruct-ure Projects for $4.95m in 2011.
It is unclear how much Pearls money was transferred to Australia, although Mr Coburn esti-mates it is about $170m, with a further $130m-odd transferred to Singapore and Hong Kong.
Mr Coburn welcomed the latest move by the Lodha committee as he required a nod from the committee so he could begin proceedings to freeze assets here to prevent them from being sold.
"We don't need them to engage- us, we just need a letter to say they are happy for us to go ahead," he said.
Mr Coburn said there had been some concerns over the time it was taking the Lodha committee to act in relation to the Australian assets, particularly given that regulator the Securities and Exchang-e Board of India - under whose direction the committee operates - received court approval to do so in   August 2014.
"I have gone to India and spok-en with investors and I am very concerned about their plight, and I have stressed with the Lodha committee that we need to act urgently," Mr Coburn said."It appears very little was happeni-ng until The Australian raised many of these issues, and it appears now everything will be moving in a more urgent approac-h."