WB: CBI raids chit fund offices, Shankudeb Panda interrogated
According to sources, few teams of the CBI are raiding the offices of the chit fund company at twelve locations including Kolkata's Salt Lake area, South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Nadia and Bankura districts of West Bengal.
"Ignoring the SEBI's guidelines, Angel Agritech collected a huge amount of deposits from the market like other chit fund companies. Our raids at few offices and directors' houses of the chit fund company are currently underway. We have seized few documents so far from the premises. We have also found a strong connection between this company and one former minister of our state, who resigned from his post recently," one CBI official told IBNS.
Meanwhile, the CBI on Monday interrogated ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC)'s State General Secretary Shankudeb Panda for nearly two hours in connection with the ongoing probe into the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam.
According to reports, the journalist-turned TMC leader visited CBI's office at CGO Complex in Kolkata's Salt Lake area around 12:30 pm. on Monday, to submit few documents related to his erstwhile job at Saradha Media Ltd.
"We are examining his documents and after the completion of this process we will take next step," a CBI officer told IBNS.
However, Shankudeb Panda left the CGO complex on Monday without giving any reaction to the media.
Panda was a stringer of ABP Ananda (Formerly Star Ananda) and a reporter of Saradha group owned TV channel 'Channel-10'.
He got an important post in TV channel 'Ekhon Somoy' which was never 'on-aired' and allegedly got 60 thousand rupees salary every month along with other benefits from that channel. 'Ekhon Somoy' was a TV channel formed by artist Shubhaprasanna and Saradha group owner Sudipta Sen bought that channel from him.
The CBI grilled Panda earlier on Dec 2 and he was also quizzed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Dec 29 last year in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam.
(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha, Image: IBNS)
Support Our Journalism
We cannot do without you.. your contribution supports unbiased journalism
IBNS is not driven by any ism- not wokeism, not racism, not skewed secularism, not hyper right-wing or left liberal ideals, nor by any hardline religious beliefs or hyper nationalism. We want to serve you good old objective news, as they are. We do not judge or preach. We let people decide for themselves. We only try to present factual and well-sourced news.