BHUBANESHWAR: Managing director (MD) of Adarsh Group, Bijay Kumar Rout, was sentenced to four years imprisonment in the Ponzi scam by a special CBI court on Friday, and has been directed to pay Rs 15,000 as fine. The court has also imposed a fine to the tune of Rs 12 crore on two entities under the parent company.
The Court of Special CJM (CBI), Bhubaneswar, also found Adarsh Stalfed Farms Pvt Ltd and Adarsh Wealth Ventures Pvt Ltd guilty. The firms have been directed to pay a compensation Rs 12 crore which shall be reimbursed to the depositors as per the law.
The conviction comes about four months after the CBI submitted a chargesheet against Bijay Kumar Rout under Sections 120-B, 409/420 of the IPC and Sections 4/5/6 of Prize Chit and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act, 1978. Besides him, 12 others and six entities, including the two aforementioned entities, were also chargesheeted
Rout’s Adarsh Group had floated financial schemes in Odisha and collected deposits from the public through agents. The deposits mobilised were allegedly paid to Bijay Kumar Rout who subsequently absconded without paying the investors.
During investigation it was found that the accused, through the companies had collected about Rs 29.86 crore from the public but paid back just about Rs 8.19 crore only to few investors. Another Rs. 21.66 crore was misappropriated by
the company and its promoters.
The probe agency had registered a case against the Ponzi firm on June 5, 2014 as per the orders of the Supreme Court and taken over the investigation which was initially registered with Bhandaripokhari police station.
Trial against the other accused as well as the companies is still underway.Kingpin of the scam, Anubhav Mittal,was arrested by an Uttar Pradesh special task force (STF) on February 2.
The Central probe agency had earlier said the fraudsters allegedly cheated about 6.5 lakh gullible investors of an estimated Rs 3,700 crore, a fraud many more times in value than the infamous Saradha chit fund scam of West Bengal and Assam which is pegged at Rs 2,500 crore.