Rose Valley scam case: Bengali actor Rituparna Sengupta summoned for questioning

Kolkata, July 10: Bengali actor Rituparna Sengupta has reportedly been summoned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with the probe in Rose Valley scam, considered as one of the biggest financial frauds that shook West Bengal in 2013. Sengupta has reportedly been summoned for questioning.

Last year, rumours had surfaced about Bengali film industry-chit fund nexus. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had earlier arrested actor and Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal in connection with the multi-crore Rose Valley chit fund scandal.

Enforcement Directorate has summoned Tollywood actor Rituparna Sengupta for questioning in connection with Rose Valley scam case, news agency ANI reported today.

Rose Valley Group CMD Gautam Kundu's production firm Brand Value Communication had also come under scanner earlier. The ED had registered an FIR against the firm, its Chairman Gautam Kundu and others in 2014 under the PMLA. Gautam Kundu was arrested by the agency in Kolkata in 2015.

The Rose Valley group had allegedly floated a total of 27 companies for running the alleged chit fund operations of which only half a dozen were active.

The Rose Valley Scam:

In 2015, the chairman of Rose Valley, Gautam Kundu had been arrested and probed by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate. The scam was estimated at a whopping Rs 15,000 crore. With the arrest of Kundu, the focus shifted to the Rose Valley scam as it nearly ten times bigger than the Saradha scam.

The ED had frozen 2,500 accounts of the Rose Valley group and the agency suspects that there are many more to be tracked and frozen. An ED officer part of the probe says that though both the cases are independent, most of the suspects are common to both cases. Many names from the TMC had cropped up during the investigation and they remain common to both scams, the ED officer noted.

The agency had also arrested Madan Mitra of the TMC in connection with the Saradha scam. It was suspected that he may have played an alleged role in the Rose Valley scam as well.

The name of TMC MP, Tapas Paul too had cropped up during investigations as he was the director in the company, the probe has also revealed. Officials say that the scanner is not just on some of the TMC leaders, but on CPM leaders as well. We were aware that the deposits in both the Saradha and Rose Valley scams were collected for the first time when the CPM was in power.

There are several CPM leaders who were aware of these scams but preferred to look the other way. While the making of the scam began when the CPM was in power, both Kundu and Sudipto Sen were quick to cozy up to the TMC when it came to power, officials also said. Both Sen and Kundu had met Mamata separately at Deolo and this meeting was arranged at the behest of some TMC leaders. It has been found that these meetings were a courtesy call by both Sen and Kundu, the probe revealed.