Three MPS directors in CBI net

KOLKATA: CBI on Tuesday carried out three major arrests in the MPS case.
A CBI spokesperson said that three MPS directors - Madhusudan Adhikary, Shantanu Chowdhury and Pradip Chandra - were on Tuesday summoned to the regional office of CBI at Salt Lake's CGO complex. They were questioned there for around six hours.
"They were arrested as they could not give satisfactory answers to our queries," said the official.
This comes days after a division bench of Calcutta high court headed by Chief Justice Manjula Chellur made CBI, Sebi and ED parties to the MPS case and declared that the prime objective of the bench would be to refund money to depositors. However, the sudden arrests raised eyebrows in the political circles especially since MPS owner Pramatha Nath Manna was taken into CBI custody in March. ED had earlier sealed about 50 bank accounts of MPS group while probing the case. The state CID had first lodged a case against MPS.
CBI officials had identified four directors whom Manna had appointed over the last four years of Left rule "to carry out illegal operations". The three arrested are believed to be part of this team.
One of them, who controlled the proceedings of MPS Infotech, had been provided with a car for office and personal use and had bought a palatial house in Lake Town area.
The probe team is also certain that Manna along with his core group had helped at least three other directors of rival financial firms in turning their black money white. They are certain that Saradha top boss Sudipta Sen had been in touch with Manna in the past four years and the two had indeed met in Jhargram.
The MPS Group case came up before the division bench headed by Chief Justice Chellur in March after the company moved an appeal to challenge the legality of an order passed by Justice Saumitra Pal of the same court, directing Bengal police to shut down all units of MPS Resorts and Hotels and MPS Greenery.
The bench had made the CBI, Sebi and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) parties to the case and declared that the prime objective of the bench would be to refund money to the depositors. The court formed a committee with representatives of Sebi, the ED and the CBI to assess the volume of the assets of the two MPS companies and to sell their stocks of food products.
When the process was completed, the court expressed its desire to form another committee headed by a former high court judge for the purpose of selling all assets of the group to refund the money to the depositors.
MPS Greenery was the only deposit-taking company in Bengal that had obtained clearance from the previous Left government to buy land above the permissible limit of 2 acres under provincial land laws. Armed with the so-called 14Y clearance, which was granted by the land and land reforms department on recommendation of the animal husbandry department, MPS had built a large poultry farm and resort in Jhargram. It is said that he had the backing of a top district leader of the Left who had provided plenty of support in this regard.
MPS had raised Rs 1,600 crore till March 2013 through its various collective investment schemes. Fresh collections started to dwindle following the collapse of Saradha in March-April 2013. The Sebi had initiated recovery proceedings against MPS in October 2013, when the market regulator asked it to return Rs 1,520 crore collected from investors through unauthorized collective investment schemes, along with applicable returns, interest payments and other related charges.
The CBI had earlier raided 19 offices and residences of people related to MPS. CBI sources said they have found that Manna had initially spent a few crores to attract new investors to MPS. To make these payments, investigators believe Manna used the profits that he made illegally from Satadal Savings, which collected money from Midnapore homes from the early-1980s until it went bust in 1997.