ED grills Rose Valley official in chit fund scam

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is probing the chit fund scam in West Bengal, on Thursday grilled Seema Singh, a top official of the Rose Valley group which is alleged to have illegally raised public money.

Seema Singh, the head of the company's human resource department appeared before the ED office here in the morning.

"She is being grilled about the financial transactions made by the company," said an ED source.

Seema Singh is said to be helming the company in the absence of Chairman Gautam Kundu who was arrested by the ED in March under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

Company Managing Director Shibomoy Datta is also behind bars after being nabbed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) which too is probing the scam.

The corporate affairs ministry in 2013 had named Rose Valley as one of the 73 companies involved in ponzi schemes in Bengal.

Having cast its net across the states of Bengal Tripura, Assam, Odisha, Jharkhand and Maharashtra among others, the company is alleged to have raised close to Rs.15,000 crore.

Found guilty of running "collective investment scheme" without necessary approvals, the SEBI in June 2014 had ordered the company to refund the money to the investors and barred it barred from accessing the securities market.