After Saradha scam, Rose Valley scam set to singe Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal
Pal, who is a member of Lok Sabha from Krishnanagar, had allegedly taken money from the Rose Valley Group on several occasions. He allegedly also signed several deals with the group. He is believed to have been a director of the group.
It's not just the Saradha scam that is stinging the Trinamool Congress in West Bengal. Now even the Rose Valley Group scam is set to singe the ruling dispensation here. On Wednesday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) raided the residence of party MP Tapas Pal in connection with the Rose Valley scam which the agency is investigating. Pal, however, pleaded ignorance, saying he was not aware of the CBI raid.
Pal, who is a member of Lok Sabha from Krishnanagar, had allegedly taken money from the Rose Valley Group on several occasions. He allegedly also signed several deals with the group. He is believed to have been a director of the group.
Two-hour search
The CBI sleuths reached Pal's South Kolkata residence at around 10.45 on Wednesday morning and searched the flat for over two hours. After that the CBI team left the flat. Journalists later tried to gain access into the flat but they were denied entry by the security guard.
Pal, who returned from Delhi on Wednesday, said that he was not aware of the CBI raid. "I have just returned from Delhi. I am not aware of anything. Let people do their work. I shall cooperate," Pal said. "I have left the group long back. My wife works for some television programme which that group sponsors," he added. Paul was in the news last year for his alleged hate speech at a rally in which he was reportedly caught on camera asking Trinamool supporters to rape and kill Communist Party of India-Marxist activists.
On the whole, the CBI raided 43 locations across India in connection with the Rose Valley scam. Of these, 27 locations were in West Bengal; seven in Tripura; and one location each in Odisha, Assam, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu.
In West Bengal, the CBI raided offices and residences of Rose Valley Group chairman Gautam Kundu, managing director Shibamoy Dutta and former directors of the group, including Abir Kundu, Ramlal Goswami and Ashok Kumar Saha.
Besides CBI, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) is also probing the scam. ED had sealed several bank accounts of the group across the country and interrogated Gautam Kundu. The group's properties were confiscated in Odisha following a court order on February 25.
Several of its bank accounts were frozen as well.
Mantrispeak
Last month, Union Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha, in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, said the Saradha Group and the Rose Valley raised Rs 12,740 crore illegally. According to Sinha, investigations revealed that the Rose Valley Group raised as much as `10,281 crore from investors while Saradha firms had mobilised Rs 2,459 crore.
Found guilty of running "collective investment scheme" without necessary approvals, the Securities and Exchange Board of India in June of 2014 had ordered the group to refund the money to the investors and barred it from accessing the securities market.