Saradha Ponzi Case: First Chargesheet Filed by ED

Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed its first chargesheet in the multi-crore rupee Saradha chit fund scam case.

Srinjoy Bose in a File Photo From May, 2015. (Photo: IANS Photo)

Only days before West Bengal goes to Assembly polls, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed its first chargesheet on 31 March in the multi-crore rupee Saradha chit fund scam case, naming ex-Trinamool Congress, MP Srinjoy Bose, and Chairman of the now-defunct group head Sudipta Sen, among others.

The over-10,000-page charge sheet, also called the prosecution complaint by ED, was filed before a special sessions court.

The agency has named 21 accused in the chargesheet. It includes 10 individuals and eleven companies which it had investigated for over three years under Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Apart from Bose, who quit both Trinamool Congress and his Rajya Sabha membership earlier this year, ED has named Sudipta Sen, his senior employee in the Saradha group Debjani Mukherjee, his wife Piyali Sen, son Shubhojit, businessmen Shantanu Ghosh and Ramesh Gandhi, Saradha agent Prashant Naskar, former Union Minister Matang Sinh, and his estranged wife, Manoranjana Singh.

The agency has issued four orders for attaching properties worth about Rs 600 crore in this case till now, which have also been furnished in the chargesheet. It registered a case under PMLA in 2013, taking cognisance of police FIRs of West Bengal, Assam, and Odisha.

The chargesheet, official sources said, has also put on record the transactions made through 91 bank accounts, out of the total 338, that were used to indulge in the alleged chit fund scam on numerous gullible depositors in the three states.

ED has pegged the amount of the scam at Rs 2,500 crore and has conducted a detailed investigation involving lakhs of multi-layered transactions and found that “more than 90 per cent of such companies existed only on paper and only 17 companies out of the 224 companies actually had carried out some business.”

The chargesheet, sources said, only pertains to the spread of the scam in West Bengal, which goes to polls beginning April 4, and not in Assam and Odisha.

The six-phase polls to the 294-seat Assembly will end on May 5. Counting of votes will take place on May 19 for West Bengal and the four other states.