BHUBANESWAR: The managing director of Micro Finance Ltd (MFL) Ashok Kumar Patnaik was on Friday sentenced to three and a half years of rigorous imprisonment in a multi-crore chit fund scam.
The special CBI court also imposed a penalty of Rs 15,000 on Patnaik.
Patnaik had pleaded guilty to the charges pressed against him by CBI. The agency court has directed MFL to deposit Rs 105 crore, failing which its properties would be attached.
The company faced charges of defrauding depositors out of around Rs 400 crore by floating six companies in Odisha. The firms included Micro Leasing and Funding, Micro Hotels, Micro Constructions, Micro Hospitals and Micro Media.
Patnaik was arrested by the CBI in March 2014.
In February 2015, the agency filed a charge sheet against five people including a former CMD of the company, Durga Prasad Mishra, and managing director Patnaik and three other directors of MFL. They were charged under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Prize Chit and Money Circulation (Banning) Act, 1978.
The company had been barred by the Reserve Bank of India in September 2012 from collecting deposits from people. The company’s founders floated Micro Leasing and Funding Pvt Ltd to dodge the regulatory body and continue collecting public deposits.