BHUBANESWAR: The State Government on Saturday extended the tenure of the Commission of inquiry headed by justice MM Das probing into multi-crore chit fund scam by another six months from February 5.A notification in this regard was issued by the Home department on the day. Over three lakh affidavits have been examined by the Commission out of 8.7 lakh affidavits filed by the investors duped by many chit fund companies in Odisha.
Set up in July 2013, Justice Das headed the panel in February 2015 following the death of the then Commission Justice RK Patra. The Commission of Inquiry has so far submitted four interim reports to the Government. In its fourth report submitted on January 18, the Commission had identified 55,563 small depositors out of which 10,037 were depositors of Flourish India, 6,497 of Seashore Group, 3,798 of Sarada Group and 2,310 of Artha Tatwa (AT) Group.
The Commission identified small depositors after examining 1, 38,388 affidavits filed by depositors of 342 companies. The Commission, in its third interim report in July last year, had identified 41,519 small investors after registering cases against 176 companies. The Commission had recommended in its reports to the State Government to ensure refund of money deposited by the small investors on priority basis.
One of the points in the terms of reference of the Commission was to prove and bring out involvement of influential persons, bureaucrats and other sections of society, if any, in protecting or promoting such illegal activities. It was also requested to suggest measures to safeguard the interest of genuine investors affected by the recent incidents relating to unauthorised collection of public deposits and its misappropriation.
The Commission will suggest measures to ensure financial security for the genuine investors and prevention of such problems in future. On February 20, 2015, the State Government added another terms of reference for the Commission to “identify the bona fide investors affected by the unauthorised financial transaction of fraudulent financial establishments/companies and suggest the modality of payment of compensation, the names of small investors eligible for compensation and the amount of compensation payment from the corpus fund set up by the Government for the purpose, or otherwise.” However, though the State Government had announced a corpus fund of `300 crore in July, 2013 for compensation to the small depositors, no further steps have been taken in this regard.
