The CBI on Wednesday interrogated Odisha Cricket Association (OCA) secretary Asirbad Behera for the fourth time in connection with chit fund company Artha Tatwa (AT) Group. He was quizzed along with the OCA’s four other office-bearers.
Behera along with OCA joint secretary Sanjeev Dutta, treasurer Satya Mohanty, accountants MD Ahad and Shyama Prasad Rout left the CBI office here after around two hours of interrogation.
The CBI officials wanted essential documents from Behera and his colleagues about expenditure and sponsorship fee of the Odisha Premier league (OPl-I), which was sponsored by the AT Group and organised by the OCA in 2011.
On Tuesday, OCA treasurer Mohanty had told reporters that the association had spent more than Rs 1.5 crore in organising the OPl-I, the cricket tournament. The AT Group had given Rs 1 crore as sponsorship fee, he added.
He also informed that the OCA had spent Rs 55 lakh in sending the Odisha Ranji team to Australia in 2011-12, Rs 57 lakh in hiring former Australian player Michael Bevan to train the Odisha Ranji players in 2011 and Rs 30 lakh towards the logo and official jerseys for the senior, junior or women teams, he added.
On Wednesday, the CBI also interrogated Seashore CMD Prashant Dash’s son Pradeep in connection with the chit fund scam. Pradeep was managing the company’s business after Prashant’s arrest on June 19 last year.
The probing agency would also examine phone call details of Pradeep to elicit some vital information from him, sources said.
In a related development, the Special Chief Judicial Magistrate Court here allowed the CBI to take land broker Subhankar Nayak on a nine-day remand. The CBI had arrested Nayak on Tuesday after conducting raid on his house at Chandrama Apartments at Kharvel Nagar in the city.
Sources said Nayak was an influential broker and acted as a middleman between the Seashore Group and top bureaucrats.