CBI digs up chit fund link in OPL cricket tournament

The sleuths grilled top cricket official of state cricket body, Ashirbad Behera, for nearly three hours

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) today tried to find out links of chit fund firms with the organisers and team owners of Odisha Premier League (OPL), the state level Twenty20 format cricket tournament, by interrogating officials of Odisha Cricket Association (OCA).

The sleuths grilled top cricket official of state cricket body, Ashirbad Behera, the OCA general secretary, for nearly three hours and asked him to produce documents related to expenditure of the tournament, which was launched in 2011 with the help of chit fund firm Artha Tatwa Group (AT Group).

The Artha Tatwa (AT) Group is among 44 firms under CBI scanner for duping thousands of investors in the state through fraudulent money circulation schemes.

Behera, who was accompanied with an accountant of OCA in the morning to the CBI office here, came back with documents and five other officials of the cricket board to show details of the funding and expenditure of the OPL tournament. AT group was the title sponsor of the event and had donated Rs 1 crore for the tournament.

But CBI believes the chit fund firm was surrogate owner of some teams which participated in the event via other people. The investigating agency today questioned both Behera and arrested builder Sagar Ray, who was owner of Bhubaneswar Jaguars team, about money invested in the team and players' remuneration.

Earlier this year, the agency had questioned a chartered accountant (CA) of Puri Emperors, a franchisee of OPL in this connection. Puri Emperors was promoted by Orisons Overseas Pvt Ltd, a Bhubaneswar-based real estate firm. Interestingly, one of the directors of Orisons was also director of LG Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, which owned Bhubaneswar Jaguars.

OPL was started in 2011, with 10 teams representing 10 cities of the state. However, its second edition was cancelled after the income tax officials hounded the team owners about the source of money spent in the tournament. Though OCA tried to revive its third edition, it could not succeed. Apart from Puri and Bhubaneswar teams, the CBI is also trying to investigate money invested in teams such as Angul Tuskers, promoted by Bikash Swain, owner of Odia daily 'Suryaprava' and Balasore Bagha, which was bought by SV Infra, a firm owned by Ranjan Das of Swastik India. Both Swain and Das are now in jail over their alleged link with the AT group.

Along with role of businessmen in funding and running the OPL, the CBI is trying to find out whether OCA officials received any favour from the tainted firm.

On August 17 this year, the agency had raided Behera's house and questioned his son with regard to payment received by OCA from AT Group. Behera was also questioned by the state police last year.