The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has provisionally attached movable and immovable assets worth Rs 3.92 crore belonging to Pravat Ranjan Biswal, former Cuttack MLA and Media Guru Consultants Pvt Ltd under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in a ponzy scam case.
The attached assets include bank balance of Rs 25 lakh at SBI Cuttack Branch belonging to Pravat Ranjan Biswal and one immovable property belonging to Media Guru Consultants Private Ltd. in NOIDA, Gautam Buddh Nagar, Uttar Pradesh, the ED said in a statement.
Biswal is accused of fraudulent collection of deposits from the gullible public in the guise of issuance of preferential shares by enrolling the depositors as members of cooperative societies.These companies were neither registered as Non-Banking Finance Company (NBFC) with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) nor listed in National Stock Exchange of India (NSEI) and as such not authorised to collect such public deposits, it said.
Subsequently, they suddenly closed down their business and defaulted in return to depositors after maturity and failed to pay even interest on the deposits despite repeated request and approach of the depositors.
