BHUBANESWAR: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Crime Branch on Saturday arrested the Odisha head of ponzi firm Hedgex Fund LLP, which allegedly defrauded investors to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore across 10 states in the country. The accused Pratap Kumar Rout was produced before a designated court in Cuttack later in the day.
EOW had registered a case in this connection on October 14 after a depositor Bijay Kumar Panigrahy alleged that the representatives of Hedgex Fund lured him to invest his retirement amount on the promise of getting monthly returns from 11 per cent to 18 per cent.
Probe revealed Rout had organised several promotional meetings in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack to lure the investors. He had allegedly assured Panigrahy that they would invest his money in forex market (foreign exchange), claiming it was not a money rotation scheme, EOW said in a statement.
However, a few months after Panigrahy invested about Rs 92.60 lakh, Hedgex Fund stopped its operations. Rout reportedly assured him that he was in constant touch with Hedgex Fund’s designated partners Dinesh Kumar Jain and Kuldeep Singh Panwar, and his money would be handed back to him, but it never happened, EOW added.
Investigation revealed Hedgex Fund was registered in Goa in 2023 and collected deposits worth over Rs 1,000 crore from more than three lakh investors in 10 states - Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and New Delhi. In Odisha, the representatives of the ponzi firm defrauded about 12,000 depositors to the tune of Rs 139 crore.
