Kolkata: The Enforcement Directorate on Friday attached assets worth Rs 293 crore, including 6 hotels and a 17-acre amusement park in Tripura, in connection with the Rose Valley chit fund scam case where thousands of people were allegedly cheated in West Bengal and Odisha, officials said.
The central probe agency's office here issued a provisional attachment order under sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The attached assets include six hotels in Assam, Bihar and West Bengal, a 17-acre amusement park in Tripura, a prime commercial space in Kolkata, some other land properties in other states and three flats in another posh area of the West Bengal capital.
With this fresh action, the total attachment by the Enforcement Directorate in this case stands at Rs 1,950 crore (market value). "The latest attachment order is on assets worth Rs 293 crore (market value)," a senior official in the agency said.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had registered a criminal FIR against the firm, its chairman Gautam Kundu and others in 2014 under the PMLA.
Kundu was arrested by the agency from here in March, 2015, and he is currently in judicial custody.
Multiple charge sheets have been filed in the courts in Kolkata and Bhubaneswar by the ED in this case. Few more attachment orders and charge sheets are expected to be filed by the ED in the next few months. The group had allegedly floated 27 companies for running the alleged chit fund operations out of which only half-a-dozen were active.
It is alleged that the firm had floated the scheme by promising inflated returns between 8 and 27 per cent on investments to gullible investors in various states.
The company had allegedly promised astronomical returns to depositors on land properties and assets and bookings done in the real estate sector.
It is alleged the company had made "cross investments" in its various sister firms to suppress its liabilities towards investors. The SEBI had probed the company before the ED, and the CBI registered cases against the group. The ED has pegged the total volume of the alleged irregularities at Rs 8,600 crore.
An attachment order under the PMLA is aimed at depriving the accused from getting benefits of their ill-gotten wealth and it gets confirmed after an order is passed by the Adjudicating Authority of the said Act.
