Odisha chit fund scam: ED attaches assets of Fine Indisales

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Dec 23:

The Enforcement Directorate (ED), Kolkata, today attached the movable and immovable assets of Fine Indisales, a chit fund company worth Rs 47 crore.

The attached assets include land worth Rs 19 crore in Mumbai and bank deposits of Rs 28 crore in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh.

The chit fund company has been running its business in Odisha, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh while in Odisha it had its branches in Cuttack and Baleswar.

ED sources said the ponzi company was earlier probed by CBI in the month of April last year into the Rs 578-crore chit fund scam that was unearthed in July 2009 in Baleswar district.

The Sahadevkhunta police in Baleswar district in 2009 had busted a chit fund scam involving several companies and multi-level marketing companies in Baleswar district after an investor complained that he had been duped by Fine Indisales Pvt Ltd.

The Odisha Crime Branch police that took up the investigation in the same year, had found that the chit fund money was used by the Fine Indisales to make “Shadow” film by the visually challenged actor Naseer Khan.

The CB sleuths had also found evidence that crores of scam money was transferred to the account of the Khan’s production company, Great Entertainment, which had produced the film.

The tentacles of the controversial money circulation by the company ran beyond Odisha.

Naseer was arrested in October 2009 but soon released on bail.

The CB had also frozen bank accounts of the company with deposits of over Rs 191 crore. The investigating agency had found that over 2 .5 lakh people had invested over Rs 578 crore in the company.