Bhubaneswar: While the State government has expressed its inability to liquidate the assets of 11 companies involved in chit fund scam citing that they have vanished from the State, an investigation conducted by Odisha Television has found that the offices of some of these chit fund companies are still functional in the capital city of Odisha.
A case in point is Specimens Multipurpose Cooperative Society. Asked by the Centre to submit a probe report on the liquidation of this company, the Registrar of Cooperative Societies had said that no information could be obtained as the said company had moved its office to Aurangabad in Maharashtra. But shockingly, company employees still work out of its office located at Plot no 45 in Jayadev Vihar in Bhubaneswar.
However, none of the staff agreed to to talk to Odisha Television.
“We registered the company at the Bhubaneswar address. We then closed down the office due to higher costs and shifted it to Berhampur. The employees found there are not ours and we have not received any liquidation orders,” said Rusi Prasad Nayak, a member of the Specimens Multipurpose Cooperative Society.
The State registrar of cooperative societies conducted an investigation on 50 multipurpose cooperative societies as per the direction of the central cooperative registrar and RBI. These included big names like Artha Tatwa, Swastik India, Micro Finance, Sai Kishore, Mideast, and Green India Multi Credit society. The CBI investigation found out that out of 50, 35 companies were not present in Odisha. Out of the rest, the central cooperative society ordered liquidation of 11 such companies. However, the State government has expressed its inability saying these companies were not traceable and no information could be obtained on them.
“When the central registrar visited Odisha, they visited 15 societies and they appointed some liquidators to liquidate 11 societies. We have submitted a status report to the central registrar and expect it to do the needful,” said Chittaranjan Tripathy, the joint director in the office of the Registrar of Cooperative Society.