Govt appoints new chit fund probe panel head

CBI raids several offices of Shardha in Odisha

The state government today appointed Justice Madan Mohan Das as the head the one man commission for verification and return of chit fund deposits raised by several unscrupulous financial companies.

The post was lying vacant since January 28 after the death of Justice R K Patra, who was heading the panel since its constitution in July 2013.

Justice Patra died of pneumonia and other ailments last month in Cuttack. Justice Das, whose name was approved today, was a judge in Orissa High Court between 2003 and 2014.

The Commission has so far received about a million claims from people across the state for return of their deposits. To verify their claims, the commission had sought the help of state-run Odisha Computer Application Centre (OCAC) to digitise each and every claim and to reconcile them with the data received from chit fund firms. Before his demise, Justice Patra had rued that the digitisation process has been slow and suggested that small investors, who had deposited upto Rs 10,000, must be identified on a priority basis and their deposits must be refunded at the earliest.

The state government has allotted Rs 300 crore to form a corpus fund, which will be used to return money to the duped investors. The fund will also accumulate money received from auctioning of the properties of chit fund firms. In a separate development, the economic offence wing (EOW) of the state police today sought permission of the state government to attach properties of two real estate companies-- Gajanan Property Dealer & Construction Private Ltd and Ascend Creation of Kendrapara and Jajpur district respectively. The properties of Gajanan include 7.14 acres land, a market complex and a Kalyan Mandap at Pattamundai. In case of Ascend, the EOW has asked permission to attached 9.9 acres of land, a car and a petrol pump at Rasulpur in Jajpur district.

The EOW had earlier confiscated properties of Seashore and Artha Tatwa Group amounting several hundred crore rupees.

However, the Enforcement Directorate, working under Union Finance Ministry has taken possession of these attached properties after Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was asked by the Supreme Court to probe the multi-state and multi-crore scam. The CBI today raided several offices of Sharadha chit fund company in Puri, Koraput, Cuttack and Balasore along with its Kolkata offices. The Puri office was sealed by state EOW in April last year. The central investigating agency searched for additional documents not seized by the state police, official sources said.