The Enforcement Directorate (ED) in a statement on Wednesday said it has provisionally attached assets worth ₹26.98 crore of the West Bengal based Rose Valley Group under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 in the multi-crore money laundering scam. These assets include land, hotels, bank balance, and demand drafts attributed to the Rose Valley Group.
The agency initiated a money-laundering investigation after FIRs were registered by West Bengal Police against the group and its chairman Gautam Kundu and others. Subsequently, ED arrested Kundu in 2015 in Kolkata. Gautam Kundu’s wife, Subhra Kundu was also arrested earlier in January this year by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Trinamool Congress parliamentarians Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal were also arrested by CBI in 2017 in connection with the case.
As reported earlier by Hindustan Times, the ₹17,000 crore Rose Valley scam is the biggest in Bengal in terms of money involved. The Supreme Court had asked the CBI to investigate the scam and the role of influential people earlier in 2014.
“The group had collected huge amounts of money from the common gullible public by floating fake and fictitious schemes and defaulted on repayments,” the ED said in the statement released on Wednesday.
The group had cheated millions of investors, most of them from low-income groups, in West Bengal, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, and other states promising exponential returns.The group had floated 27 companies for running the alleged chit fund operations, out of which only half a dozen were active. The company allegedly promised astronomical returns to investors on bookings done in the real estate sector. The company had also made several investments in sister firms to suppress its liabilities towards its investors.
Federal agencies are currently investigating the case.