BHUBANESWAR: A CBI team on Friday questioned BJD vice-president Debiprasad Mishra at his official residence here in connection with the Mahanadi Boating Project of a chit fund company, the senior party leader said.
Mishra, who is in home isolation after testing COVID- 19 positive, said it was "not a raid" and that the officials "just wanted some documents".
Speaking to reporters after officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) left his residence, the former tourism minister said, "They asked me about the documents of the project and I told them they are in the department and not with me."
Mishra, a sitting MLA from Badamba, said, he has all along cooperated with the CBI.
There was no official confirmation from the CBI which has been probing the Seashore chit fund scam since 2014.
The BJD leader said that he was not given prior information regarding the visit of the central investigating agency to his place.
The CBI team was in his house for about two hours.
Mishra found himself embroiled in the controversy as the Seashore Group was awarded the Mahanadi Boating Project when he was Odishas tourism minister, sources said.
The state government had signed an agreement with Seashore Group for a water sports complex with a restaurant in Cuttack and allowed the company to manage a state-run guest house in Khurda in 2008-09 during Mishra's tenure as the Tourism minister, the sources said.
The agency had reopened the case in July and interrogated one of the main accused, Subhankar Nayak, to ascertain the role of two IAS officers and one IPS officer in the multi-crore scam.
The CBI had grilled two associates of the former minister, Dilip Mishra and Prafulla Singh, for nearly four hours in August.
Pravat Biswal, were earlier arrested by the CBI.
They were later released on bail.
Seashore Group is one of the 44 chit fund companies in Odisha that came under the scanner of CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) after the Supreme Court gave its order to probe their finances and transactions.
The ED had registered a case against the Seashore Group in 2014.