Odisha court rejects bail pleas of builder Lalani, NBFC director

Reported by Sanotsh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Jan 29:

The District and Session Judge court here rejected the bail plea of Vineet Lalani, a city based builder, and Ashok Patnaik, one of the directors of Micro Finance Limited, arrested by the CBI in connection with the mega chit fund scam in Odisha.

Lalani, along with his partner Sagar Ray of Orison Properties Limited, is said to have taken huge amounts of money from the AT group for their real estate and construction business, sources said.

On November 5, the CBI team arrested Lalani and Dillip Mohanty for their alleged links with the AT Group, a ponzi firm, on the basis of their recorded statements and its investigation

Sources said Orison Properties Ltd had constructed an apartment at Sundarpada in the city using AT Group money.

However, Lalani later sold the apartment, but did not repay the amount he had taken from the AT Group, the sources added.

Ashok Patnaik, a director of a non-banking finance company (NBFC) Microfinance Ltd, had been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Odisha Crime Branch (CB) on charges of money laundering on June 3 last year.  .