BHUBANESWAR: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Saturday moved the Finance Department to issue an ad-interim order for attachment of money deposited by the Hi-Tech Group of Companies.
The company’s managing director Tirupati Panigrahi and two other directors Tirupati Choudhury and Madhusudan Panigrahi had deposited `63.55 crore as per the orders of the Supreme Court in a bid to get conditional bails in connection with a 2012 land fraud case.
When Panigrahi was granted conditional bail by Supreme Court in February 2014, he was asked to deposit the money in the court. The Supreme Court had subsequently transferred the money to a designated trial court in Cuttack. The State Government then moved the apex court seeking permission for attachment of the amount under Section-3 of Odisha Protection of Interests of Depositors (OPID) Act, 2011 for its equitable distribution among the duped investors. The court gave its approval on July 25.
Sources said over 17,000 people were cheated in the dubious land scheme floated by Hi-Tech Group. On December 25, 2012, the EOW had arrested Panigrahi and his two directors on charges of cheating the land buyers of `315 crore by floating plotting schemes in city and on its outskirts.
