A year and a half after the arrest of Saradha Group chief Sudipta Sen in a Ponzi scheme scam, the Enforcement Directorate has questioned top officials of another company — Rose Valley Group — that has collected thousands of crores from small investors in West Bengal and other States.
The group is into several businesses, mainly in the service sector, and its owner, Gautam Kundu, and an employee, Tarun Kumar Panda, were questioned for about half an hour on Thursday. Mr. Panda, accountant, used to deal with the television channel of the group.
In a statement e-mailed to The Hindu , a company spokesperson said Mr. Kundu had not been summoned, but went to meet the directorate’s officials on his own to request “not to freeze” the salary accounts of more than 10,000 group employees as only four days were left for Navaratri, the biggest festival of West Bengal. The directorate “sealed more than 2,500 bank accounts of the group, which includes the salary accounts of more than 10,000 employees,” the statement said.
The company did not deny that Mr. Panda was summoned. Mr. Kundu had earlier appeared before the Serious Fraud Investigation Office and the Justice Shyamal Kumar Sen Commission investigating investors’ grievances. The group has amassed huge wealth over the years, on the lines of the Saradha Group, investing mainly in the hospitality business and acquiring several landed properties in the State and rest of India. It has invested heavily in films, media and entertainment, information technology, real estate, food and fashion and insurance. Mr. Kundu is close to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and funds a television channel that is considered a Trinamool organ.
Much of Rose Valley’s assets are believed to have been accumulated by raising investments from small investors, again in ways similar to Saradha’s.
The company spokesperson, however, denied such speculation in an e-mail to The Hindu last November.
“We do not have any investment scheme and any financial products in selling; so, there is no question of investors and investments. What we have are the customers who have subscribed to timeshare in our hotels across India owned and partnered by us,” the spokesperson said
Saying that the group is in the business of “timeshare,” the statement explained the nature of the business. “23 properties owned by us and 22 properties under various stages of construction. Other than this, we have 1.5 lakh room nights tie-up through various partnerships per months across India and other locations. In other terms, we can sell up to 18 lakh room nights per annum through our timeshare selling,” the statement said. The statement also gave an overview of its business in Bengal, where the company was in the real estate business from 2010.
“In 2010, the company proactively wound up all the real estate business. All those who booked plots in real estate have been paid back in the last three years. Currently, we have only the timeshare business in West Bengal and taken steps to pay almost 70 per cent in the last six months from April [2013] wherever there is cancellation. We have land parcels worth more than Rs. 5,000 crore, which is yet to be unlocked,” the statement said. The company had managed to raise good money in other States as well. In Chhattisgarh, it raised about Rs. 20 crore till the end of 2013.
