By Raju Vernekar
Mumbai, Aug 30:
The Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has filed the second supplementary prosecution complaint against eight accused, in a Rs 4000 crore Saradha Chit Fund scam of the Saradha Group and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
The complaint was filed last week before the Special PMLA Court, Kolkata, the ED said in a statement on Tuesday. Those named in the com[plaint filed under Section 3 read with Section 70 of the PMLA 2002 are: Rajat Kumar Majumder ( Ex. DGP of Armed police, West Bengal), Debendranath Biswas (ex IPS), Debabrata Sarkar( an Executive Committee Member of East Bengal Club), Sandhir Agarwal, Sajjan Agarwal and Naresh Balodia (Advocate and Anubhuti Printers and Publication Pvt. Ltd, Guwahati). They are accused of acquiring proceeds of crime and concealing and projecting it as untainted property.
Saradha Group, a consortium of over 239 private companies, ran chit-fund operations in large part of Eastern India including West Bengal, Assam and Odisha, and raised around Rs 4,000 crore from 1.7 million innocent investors, without any due permission from the regulatory authorities, including Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The chit fund collapsed in April 2013. The chit fund was set up by Sudipto Sen in 2006.
The Saradha group diverted the funds collected from public for the personal benefits of promoters and defaulted on repayment to investors. In the case so far, the ED has issued 09 attachment orders provisionally attaching assets worth more than Rs. 380 Crore and has filed prosecution complaints against 26 accused persons.
Those who have been namded in the scam by different agencies including ED and CBI are: Chairman and MD, Sudipto Sen, his wife Piyali and son Subhojit, Director Debjani Mukherjee, Trinamool Congress (TMC) State General Secretary Kunal Ghosh, TMC Rajya Sabha member Srinjoy Bose, Manoranjana Sinh, estranged wife of former Union Minister and Congress leader Matang Sinh, Rajeev Kumar, former Kolkata Police Commissioner and Rajat Majumdar, retired DGP, West Bengal. Of these many accused have been released on bail. Although former Congressman Himanta Biswa Sarma (now Assam CM) was questioned by the CBI in connection with the scam, he was not arrested. He subsequently joined the BJP.
Multi-agency probe
The ED filed a criminal case against the Saradha Group and its promoters in 2013 after studying some Kolkata Police FIRs registered against the accused.
Since the chit funds are regulated under the Chit Fund Act (1982), SEBI warned the West Bengal about Saradha Group’s chit fund activities in 2011. However based on the complaints of the investors, in April 2013, SEBI ordered Saradha Group to refund the money to investors within three months and also barred the group from markets.
In September 2015, it ordered attachment of 134 properties of Saradha Group to recover Rs 774.3 crore along with other dues to the investors. Subsequently the market regulator sold some of the properties in public auction. Based on a writ petition filed by the Congress leader Abdul Mannan, the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into the scam in May 2014. The CBI filed the first charge sheet in October 2014.
After the news of India’s biggest chit fund scam broke out, over 200 agents, depositors and executives who lost their life-time savings committed suicide.
