Rose Valley chit fund scam: Kolkata Police starts fresh case of EPF defalcation

Kolkata, June 28 (IANS) The Enforcement Branch (EB) of Kolkata Police has started a fresh case of Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) defalcation against Gautam Kundu, the chief of the multi-crore chit fund entity Rose Valley Group.

City police sources said that the fresh case started over a complaint filed by the employees of a Rose Valley Group company way back in 2014. These employees alleged through the provident fund amounts were deducted from their salaries every month, those were never deposited to the office of the Employees’ Provident Fund.

Kundu is in judicial custody. He was arrested by the sleuths of Enforcement Directorate (ED), which was conducting  a parallel probe along with Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), against a number of chit fund entities operating in West Bengal,  the prominent of which were Rose Valley Group and Saradha Group.

City police sources said that the EB cops have already questioned Kundu once within the correctional home premises. In face of questioning, said sources, Kundu has pointed fingers towards certain top employees of the group company which used to handle the accounts of that group entity.

The city police cops have now decided to summon those employees named by Kundu one after another and question them in the matter.

Last month only, the ED filed a supplementary chargesheet in the Rose Valley scam, where 35 group companies were named. 

In the charge sheet,  Kundu’s wife Subhara Kundu, who was arrested by CBI in the matter, was also named. As per ED’s estimates the total fund defalcation in the Rose Valley scam is around Rs 17,000 crore.

Starting from 2012, i.e. a year after the Mamata Banerjee-led and Trinamool Congress- run regime came to power in the state ending the 34-year Left Front rule, the state was rocked by the bursting of the bubbles of different chit fund entities the prime of Which were Saradha Group and Rose Valley Group.  

Several top leaders of Trinamool Congress including MPs and MLAs like Sudip Bandopadhyay, Madan Mitra and Late Tapas Pal were also arrested by the central agencies in this connection.