Odisha court asks state govt to confiscate Rose Valley assets worth Rs 63 crores

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Feb 25:

A special court in Cuttack today ordered the Odisha government to confiscate property worth Rs 63.64 crore belonging to the ponzi firm Rose Valley Group in the state.

Justice PK Sasmal passed the order to confiscate the property under the Odisha Protection of Interest of Depositors’ Act-2011. After confiscation, the property will be auctioned and the amount realised will be distributed among the investors.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had attached a total of 2,631 bank accounts of Rose Valley Group in the states of West Bengal, Odisha, Jharkhand, Tripura, Assam and Himachal Pradesh on November 27 last year. The attachment involved two firms— Rose Valley Estate Construction Limited and Rose Valley Hotel and Entertainment Private Limited.

The ED had frozen Rs 295 crore lying in these bank accounts under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

It was the biggest ever attachment done by the ED under the PMLA in the country.

The ED had found that the Rose Valley Group had floated 27 companies for running its chit fund operations out of which only half-a-dozen were active.

The ponzi firm had floated the schemes promising gullible investors in various states returns of between 8 and 27 percent on their investments.

Besides, it had also promised “enhanced returns” on land properties and assets and bookings done in the real estate sector.

The ED, a specialized financial investigation agency under the Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, found during the course of its investigations that the company had made “cross investments” in various sister firms to suppress its liabilities towards investors.