PAC seeks white paper on chit fund scam

The Public Account Committee (PAC) of the Odisha assembly on Thursday directed the Registrar of Cooperative Societies (RoC) to prepare a white paper within a month on the involvement of cooperative societies in the chit fund scam.

The assembly committee, headed by the opposition leader, Bhupinder Singh, also asked the registrar to submit an interim report in this regard in a week.

The committee stated that there are 23 multi-state cooperative societies operating in the state registered under the Central cooperative societies act. PAC on Thursday made a through enquiry into the modus operandi of these cooperative societies.

During the enquiry, the committee found that the Registrar of Cooperative Societies did not have any idea about the functioning of seven multi-state cooperative societies that included the scam tainted Artha Tatwa group.

After a direction from the Centre, PAC said, the state government is currently probing the activities of eight multi-state cooperative organisations in the state.

Expressing deep concern over swindling of crores of rupees of common depositors' money by the chit fund companies, most of which were registered under the societies act, the opposition Congress Chief Whip, Prasad Harichandan said, the number of investors duped by these fraud companies could be one crore, much higher than the state government's claim of 22 lakh depositors.

It may be noted that the Centre had recently directed the state government to probe the functioning of 15 multi-state cooperative organisations which were running illegal money circulation and other business in different states.

Out of the 15 cooperative societies, eleven are from Bhubaneswar and one each from Bhadrak, Balasore, Berhampur and Kendrapada district.