Bhubaneswar: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday filed a preliminary charge sheet against four top executives of Rose Valley Group, a company facing probe in the chit fund scam, for allegedly cheating thousands of gullible investors of their hard earned money by promising high returns on their deposits.
CBI sources said the charge sheet has been filed against chairman Gautam Kundu, managing director (MD) Sibamaya Datta, and two directors of the tainted company - Ashok Kumar Saha and Ram Lal Goswami.
According to reports, the company had allegedly duped investors to the tune of nearly Rs 17,000 crore across India.
The company was active in Odisha with 28 branches, in almost every district, and duped investors in the state of Rs 450 crores promising them to give high returns on their deposits.
The CBI has included 131 witnesses and 257 documents in the chargesheet. The accused have been charged under sections 120 (B), 420, 409 of the IPC and sections 4 and 6 of Prize and Chits Banning Act.
The central investigation agency has named three firms Rose Valley Real Estate & Construction Ltd, Rose Valley Hotel & Entertainment Ltd and Rose Valley Real Estate & Land Bank India Ltd in its chargesheet.
The group, which was established in 1997, had allegedly floated a total of 24 companies for running the alleged chit fund operations out of which only half-a-dozen were active. Like Saradha Group, the Rose Valley group too has diversified business activities like hotels, entertainment, cinema production etc, most of which had been questioned by SEBI.
The group has been running around 23 hotels at different places across the country.