E-Paper
CBI questions TMC’s Partha Chatterjee, former top cop Rajeev Kumar in ponzi scams
Only seven days earlier, on August 9, Rajya Sabha MP and national spokesperson of the TMC, Derek O’Brien, was questioned by CBI officers on the matter of funding of the party’s Bengali mouthpiece Jago Bangla.
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officers on Friday questioned Trinamool Congress (TMC) secretary general and Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee and former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in connection with the Saradha and Rose Valley ponzi scams respectively.
Kumar was grilled for about two hours and a half while Chatterjee was questioned for about four hours at the agency’s Salt Lake office.
“I was not summoned as an individual. They wanted to speak to me on some matters concerning the party,” Chatterjee said after emerging from the CBI office. Kumar, currently additional director general, Criminal Investigation Department did not speak to the media.
Only seven days earlier, on August 9, Rajya Sabha MP and national spokesperson of the TMC, Derek O’Brien, was questioned by CBI officers on the matter of funding of the party’s Bengali mouthpiece Jago Bangla.
Chatterjee was questioned on the same matter as Derek O’Brien, a CBI officer said on Friday on condition of anonymity. The investigators suspect that money from the Saradha group might have flowed into Jago Bangla, the party’s newspaper.
The funding of Jago Bangla has been under the lens of the CBI for some time.
On July 26, after receiving a notice from the CBI asking him to appear before the investigating officers, O’Brien had tweeted, “Jago Bangla is Trinamool’s official newspaper. Publisher: Derek O’Brien. Editor Subrata Bakshi was summoned by CBI a (few) months ago to seek clarifications. Now, the publisher served a notice at 2 pm July 25. Trinamool Motion in RS to oppose amendments to RTI Act started at 2 pm July 25.”
Bakshi, a former Lok Sabha MP and the all India general secretary of the party, was summoned in December 2018. He appeared before the CBI officers on December 10 last year.
In January this year, CBI officers visited the resident of septuagenarian Manik Majumdar, who takes care of the TMC office at Mamata Banerjee’s residence and is one of the signatories of Jago Bangla’s bank account to inquire from him about the source of funds of Jago Bangla.
CBI is investigating the Saradha and Rose Valley ponzi scams since 2014, when the supreme court asked the agency to investigate the ponzi scam and the role of ‘influentials’ in the money laundering.
The Rose Valley scam estimated at ₹17,000 core is the biggest ponzi scam in Bengal in terms of the money involved, dwarfing the high profile Saradha scam that is estimated to involve about ₹2,400 core. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is also probing both the scams.
Incidentally, on August 8, the ED questioned three-time TMC MP and film actor Satabdi Roy on her transactions with the Saradha Group. Last month, Roy had written to the ED expressing her willingness to pay back about ₹29 lakh that she had earned as the brand ambassador of Saradha.
Earlier, TMC Rajya Sabha MPs Srinjay Bose and Kunal Ghosh and West Bengal minister Madan Mitra were arrested in connection with the Saradha scam, while TMC Lok Sabha MPs Sudip Bandyopadhyay and Tapas Pal were arrested in connection with the Rose Valley scam.
