Bhubaneswar: Weeks after CNN-IBN reported a political nexus in Odisha's Rs 20,000 crore investment scam, the crime branch has now arrested the owner of another financial company. The arrested owner of Artha Tatwa, Pradip Sethi, has alleged that ministers, MLAs, top politicians and bureaucrats are also involved in the financial scam.
He has claimed that he has video and audio evidence to prove the involvement of politicians. Pradip has now been remanded to 14 days judicial custody.
The Artha Tatwa group has duped more than 50,000 depositors. The Seashore Group of companies, which is the main defaulter, also allegedly enjoyed Biju Janata Dal's patronage for the past eight years.
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09:30 AM, May 14, 2013
Kolkata: As the Calcutta High Court begins hearing pleas seeking a CBI probe into the Sharada group chit fund scam on Tuesday, CNN-IBN has found that it is unemployment and stunted industrial and agricultural growth in the state that is forcing people to invest in ponzi schemes. Seventy-year-old Sunil Sarkar recounts how he found his son Jayanta Sarkar's body at the terrace hanging by a rope. Jayanta, who was allegedly...
09:11 AM, May 14, 2013
Kolkata: Chit fund aided Saradha Group promoter Sudipta Sen's close aide Debjani Mukherjee on Friday claimed she was only a "trustworthy employee" of Sen and that she was sacked for raising her voice against the company's fund collection method. "When I found out that my boss was doing business in a way that was against my principles, I started raising my voice against him. Not considering my dedication towards the...
05:40 AM, May 11, 2013
New Delhi: The government on Thursday approved Rs 3,436.16 crore for Phase IV of the UID (Aadhaar card) scheme, which will commence immediately. The decision to approve Phase IV of the UID project at the cost of Rs 3,436.16 crore was taken in New Delhi at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Unique Identification Authority of India (CC-UIDAI), an official statement said. The Phase IV expenditure comprises Rs 1,600...
05:06 AM, May 10, 2013
Kolkata: West Bengal is planning to start a social security scheme for depositors and investors to ensure proper return of public money following the Saradha chit fund mess, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said in Kolkata on Wednesday. "In the wake of growing financial insecurity, we are thinking of a social security scheme. It will ensure proper safety of public money and ensure safe and proper return. We will shortly put...
05:20 AM, May 09, 2013
Kolkata: The amount of property amassed by Sudipta Sen, the chairman of the Saradha Group, which has been accused of duping thousands of investors, will be made public by the police. "We are planning to make public the amount of money that Sen and his associate Debjani Mukherjee has made from ponzi schemes. We are waiting for a court order to do it," DC (DD) Bidhanagar City Police, Arnab Ghosh...
02:44 AM, May 07, 2013
Yavatmal: Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court has ordered the Maharashtra Government to file an affidavit on a PIL which alleges corruption committed in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Agency (MGNREGA) scheme in the district in 2011-12. The division bench of Justice Bhushan Dharmadhikari and Justice AB Chaudhari on Friday ordered the government to file an affidavit on the PIL by July 22, 2013. The PIL was filed...
02:05 AM, May 07, 2013
Kolkata: Two more people committed suicide in West Bengal on Monday over the chit fund scam case. In the first case, the father of a ponzi scheme agent committed suicide at Sodepur in North 24 Parganas. Sixty five-year-old Jagdish Roy was upset after his son who had a total liability of Rs 1 crore was heckled by investors at his house. His son Bidhan was an agent of Annexe group...
05:09 PM, May 06, 2013
New Delhi: A Parliamentary panel on Thursday "deplored" the non-expenditure of huge funds allocated to the Minority Affairs Ministry, saying it could result in entire range of minority schemes becoming "exercises in futility". In its 37th report on the Ministry, the Standing Committee on Social Justice and Empowerment -- headed by Congress MP Hemanand Biswal -- also noted that despite marked improvement in the development indices of Muslims, the community...
01:58 AM, May 03, 2013
Kolkata: The West Bengal chit fund is getting bigger each day. It has now turns out that ponzi schemes in the state financed not just media houses but Tollywood films as well. In the past four years, at least one in three films has been produced by groups that run ponzi schemes. Rose Valley, a deposit-taking company which is now under the MCA scanner, has produced 18 films including three...
08:42 AM, Apr 29, 2013
Patna: Literacy among women in Bihar has leapfrogged to over 53 per cent from 33 per cent 12 years ago due to sustained efforts of the government, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Sunday. "Due to the hard labour of our government the female literacy rate in Bihar which was 33 per cent in 2001 leapfrogged to over 53 per cent in 2011," Nitish told a seminar. The central government...
08:09 PM, Apr 28, 2013
New Delhi: After the West Bengal chit fund scam, another ponzi scheme has been exposed. An alleged conman named Bhoop Singh alias Bhanu has been arrested in New Delhi for allegedly duping nearly 10,000 investors mainly from Maharashtra. He was also wanted for cheating cases in Goa, Gujarat and Rajasthan. Bhanu was arrested by the Delhi Police from Delhi's Jamia Nagar. ...
08:34 AM, Apr 28, 2013
Chennai: Raising strong objections to certain aspects of Centre's Direct Benefits Transfer, Tamil Nadu chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Saturday said the scheme in its present form should "not be operationalised" in the state as it is an "infringement" on the authority of state governments. In a strongly worded letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Jayalalithaa wondered if the state governments were expected to look on as mere "bystanders", far removed...
02:31 AM, Apr 28, 2013
Rose Valley's chairman Goutam Kundu wrote to West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on April 23 seeking protection from the administration. He claimed in his letter that his group had assets worth Rs 10,000 crore, and the money collected from depositors was safe in his hands. ...
11:53 PM, Apr 26, 2013
Chandigarh: The enrolment for Aadhaar card has touched 99 per cent and 88.6 per cent in Union Territory of Chandigarh and Himachal Pradesh respectively. The enrolment figure under the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) scheme in Punjab and Haryana is 62.9 per cent and 30.1 per cent respectively so far, Keshni Anand Arora, UIDAI, Deputy Director General (Northern Region), said. "We are aiming to cover the entire population in...
08:57 AM, Apr 18, 2013
In 'Accidental India: A History of the Nation's Passage through Crisis and Change', noted journalist-analyst, Shankkar Aiyar, examines India's ascent through the paradigm of seven game changers: the economic liberalization of 1991, the Green Revolution of the sixties, the nationalization of banks in 1969, Operation Flood in the seventies, the mid-day meal scheme of 1982, the software revolution of the nineties, and the passing of the Right to Information Act...
03:27 PM, Apr 09, 2013
Matigara: Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said that with the coming of the Mamata Banerjee government, West Bengal has moved from one dictatorship to another. "It is the mistake of the people that the state has moved from one dictatorship ("tanashahi") by the Left Front to another dictatorship by the Trinamool Congress," Ramesh told Congress party workers here in Siliguri subdivision of Darjeeling district. Criticising the West...
03:20 AM, Apr 08, 2013
New Delhi: The government is planning to start transferring the subsidy for cooking gas in cash under the direct benefit transfer scheme, Finance Minister P Chidambaram said on Saturday. Addressing a media conference in Delhi, Chidambaram said he would soon meet Petroleum Minister Veerappa Moily and sort out the issues related to the direct cash transfer for liquified petroleum gas (LPG). "We want to quickly move the LPG subsidy to...
03:52 AM, Apr 07, 2013
Washington: The Indian-American community has welcomed the Punjab government's announcement of 10 per cent housing and plots quota for NRIs in the state. "This is a good decision," said Satnam Singh Chahal of the North American Punjabi Association. Chahal's reaction came after Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal on Friday announced in Chandigarh that his "government has evolved a comprehensive plan to make NRIs equal partners in the industrial...
03:15 AM, Apr 06, 2013
Reserve Bank on Thursday notified 0.1 per cent reduction each in interest rates on Public Provident Fund (PPF) and Senior Citizen Savings Scheme (SCSS) to be effective from the fiscal beginning April 1, 2013. The rate of interest on PPF has been lowered from 8.8 per cent to 8.7 per cent with effect from April 1, 2013, RBI said in a notification. The rate of interest on 5 year SCSS...
06:51 PM, Mar 28, 2013
