Odisha chit fund probe panel submits fresh interim report

Justice M M Das Commission of Enquiry, probing the chit fund scam in Odisha for over four years now, on Friday submitted its seventh interim report to the State government.

Justice Das told reporters here that the fresh interim report contains the enquiry conducted by the Commission from January 1, 2019 to May 31, 2019.

"In this phase of enquiry, the Commission has identified at least 1,36,027 small investors who had invested their money in 421 chit fund companies," he said.

The panel has recommended to the state government to pay the identified small investors their invested money from the corpus fund raised by it for this purpose.

The state government has set up a corpus fund of Rs 300 crore in 2016 to pay the investors, who had invested less than Rs 10,000 in chit fund companies.

The Commission said at least 1931 small investors have got back their invested money from various chit fund companies so far.

The Commission is likely to take up the cases of bigger investors after concluding the investigations into the cases of small investors.

The Justice Das Commission had received nearly 10 lakh affidavits from the investors across the state, who were duped by nearly 500 chit fund companies with a combined amount of over Rs 3000 crore.

Set up in July 2013, Justice Das headed the panel in February 2015 following the death of Justice R K Patra, the then Commission chief.