With preliminary investigation by the police into multi-crore scam by Green Ray International, a non-banking financial company (NBFC), revealing its connection with Dubai and Nigeria, the case was handed over to the Crime Branch of police on Thursday.
Police had earlier raided offices of the company at five places in Balasore district. The company is learnt to have its offices in Dubai and Nigeria.
Floated by Mir Sahiruddin, Khalik Saha, Ayub Saha and Mir Tahiruddin of Jaleswar in the district as a private limited company in 2004, the firm now has a turnover of over Rs 2,000 crore. While Sahiruddin is Managing Director of the company, the rest are its directors.
Initially started as a gold and silver trading company, it diversified into pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and garments. Besides Odisha, it has business in West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Tamilnadu, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra, Goa, New Delhi, Mumbai and Dehradun.
Police said a primary school dropout, Sahiruddin started the company after he returned from Mumbai, where he is suspected to have come in contact with the underworld. The company has its corporate office at Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi and registered office at Jaleswar here.
“Sahiruddin belongs to a poor family. But surprisingly in the last one decade, he has become a man of crores. He used to visit Dubai and Nigeria after his company flourished in India. He was in the process of taking a gold mine on lease in Nigeria prior to the raids,” police said.
Investigations revealed that the company had most of its agents and depositors from the minority community and opened its offices mostly in minority populated areas. The company used to collect money through some ‘maulvis’ while its authorities won the trust of ‘maulvis’ by setting up madrasas and funding huge amount for religious activities.
An investigating official said the company had promised investors a monthly dividend of Rs 2,000 against each fixed deposit of Rs1 lakh. The company had collected Rs 320 crore in 2012-13 and Rs 196 crore in 2011-12.
“Not a single of its schemes has legal authorisation. What the company did was just to cheat gullible people. We are seriously looking into the possible complicity of the operatives of underworld in the chit fund scam,” the official added.
So far, five cases have been registered against the company and its eight employees, including zonal manager, chief accountant and computer operators arrested. Meanwhile, a three-member team of Crime Branch, led by ASP Gopabandhu Pati, arrived here to investigate the company’s fraudulent activities.