The noose tightened further around Saradha Group chairman Sudipta Sen even as the Enforcement Directorate filed two new cases of money laundering against the ponzi fund kingpin.
The cases would allow the Central agency the much needed access to the documents now in custody of the Bengal police and help it attach the properties of the Saradha Group.
“Cases have been lodged under the Prevention of Money laundering Act,” said an ED official, adding the two cases would deal with the company’s chit-fund activities in Kolkata and Bhubaneshwar.
Early this month, the ED had petitioned the Calcutta High Court to get the documents related to the activities of the chit fund company claiming the State police was not allowing access to the stated documents. The court had directed the police to cooperate with the ED and “we would soon start examining the documents,” the official said.
There were all possibilities of Saradha properties worth hundreds of crores being attached by the Central agency. Till now the police have managed to locate and identify many hidden properties of the Group but not a single have been attached.
Sen and his deputy Debjani Mukherjee were currently in the custody of South 24 Parganas Police. They were arrested from Sonmarg in Kashmir last month.
Though the ED had been probing the Saradha scam through cases lodged in Assam, inside sources said the latest cases were registered with the prime intention of attaching the properties of the Group so that the swindlers could be prevented from converting them into cash and stash them away abroad.
The Rs22,000 crore scam — the biggest in the history of Bengal since Independence — hit the national headlines after the Saradha Group defaulted on payments to thousands of its depositors following which Sen fled Kolkata writing a letter to the CBI in which he named a host of politicians including some Bengal MPs and Ministers as also a kin of a Union Minister for their alleged role in the scam.
After Sen’s arrest, the Bengal Opposition have been crying hoarse for a CBI inquiry and a case was pending in Calcutta High Court for the same.
“The properties are being identified and soon the statements of those arrested would be recorded,” officials said even as legal experts said the State Government could face more embarrassments if there were contradictions between the statements made by Sen to Bengal Police and those to the ED.
The Central agencies like the Income Tax Department and SEBI were already probing the case from their angle.
The State Government did precious little to assuage the feeling of lakhs of depositors — after the scam exploded in the face of the State Government — by setting up Shyamal Sen Commission to probe the scam and ask two district polices to probe the case of national and even international magnitude.
About 4.5 lakh complaints have already been filed before the designated Commission.
Meanwhile, one more chit fund agent committed suicide on Saturday night taking the toll to 22. The resident of Hooghly district killed himself after the depositors pressurised him to pay back their dues police said.