Bhubaneswar: Even Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Majhi had lost his money in chit fund scam on the pretext of receiving high returns, he revealed this today. 

Speaking at an event on National Consumer Day, Majhi made this startling revelation here today. 

"Even I was the victim of chit fund scam. I was duped by two chit fund firms -- one state-run and another private -- between 1990 and 2002," CM Majhi said. 

Revealing the matter, he said, "I had arranged money for deposits, but found no firm exists."

He said that he had made lots of efforts under old chit fund law for recovery of his deposit amounts but got no results as the legal process was complex. 

He lauded the BJP-led government at the Centre for the amendment of the Chit Funds Act, 1982 in 2019. 

"Under the supervision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, all the loopholes in the law was closed," Majhi said. 

According to reports, lakhs of depositors lost their money to bogus chit fund companies in Odisha. 

Following allegations, state government had earlier cracked down on 342 chit fund companies including Seashore, Aartha Tatwa, Rose Valley, and Micro for defrauding investors.

In May 2014, the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into the Saradha Group and 44 other chit fund firms for allegedly duping investors. 

According to data by CBI and Odisha Crime Branch, the chit fund firms had collected around Rs 4,600 crore from people in the state over a period of four years. 

Amid investigation, the then state government led by Naveen Patnaik formed a commission and set up a Rs 300 crore-corpus fund in 2013 to refund small depositors victim of the chit fund scam. 

The commission headed by Justice MM Das inquired into the chit fund scam and identified around 100,000 small depositors.

Based on the list, the state government decided to pay all the small investors, who lost Rs 10,000 or less. 

So far, around 2 lakh small investors, affected by the chitfund scam in Odisha, have already received their money back after the seizure of cash and auctioning of confiscated properties of three chit fund firms -- Rose Valley Group of Company, Golden Land Developers Group of Company and Hi-Tech Estates Group of Company -- in Odisha.