95,000 in Odisha to get back money they lost to chit funds
BHUBANESWAR: About 95,000 small depositors in Odisha who lost ₹10,000 or less to bogus chit fund companies will soon get back their money, the state government announced on Tuesday.
Though the government did not specify a timeline, an official in the know of the government’s plan said the money has been moved to tehsils across the state and the payment process would start at some point this month.
The state government had set up a ₹300-crore corpus fund in 2013 to refund small depositors who had parked their money in chit funds that were busted or exposed as scams, but the process to identify them took more than four years.
The Justice MM Das Commission that inquired into the chit fund scam in Odisha identified around 100,000 small depositors.
Working on this list, the state government has decided on payments to around 95,000 depositors in the initial phase. The government will identify more depositors in subsequent phases.
Chit fund firms collected around ₹4,600 crore from people in the state over a period of four years, according to information gathered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Odisha Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
The state government has cracked down on 342 chit fund companies, including Seashore, Aartha Tatwa, Rose Valley, and Micro, for defrauding investors.
In May 2014, the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into the Saradha group and 44 other chit fund firms for allegedly taking investors for a ride.
Odisha chief secretary Aditya Padhi said the refund money would be given from the corpus fund. “The process of identification of the depositors is nearing its end. The depositors would soon start getting their money. The payment would be made directly into the bank account of the depositor by electronic transfer,” he said.
Padhi said no decision has been taken about people who lost more than ₹10,000 to these bogus chit funds. “Other duped investors would also be reimbursed, but only from the sale proceeds of the chit fund companies’ properties attached by designated courts. We also have to see whether the ED (Enforcement Directorate) has attached any such properties,” he added.
As per the Odisha Protection of Interest of Depositors Act, 2011, four designated courts in Cuttack, Balasore, Sambalpur, and Berhampur, headed by additional district and sessions judges, would pass the verdict on attachment of properties.