Rose Valley chit fund case: ED files fresh charge sheet under PMLA

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday filed a supplementary charge sheet in the Rose Valley chit scam case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), lawyers representing the federal agency said.

The Rose Valley financial scandal or Rose Valley Chit Fund Scam was a multi-crore financial scam and alleged political scandal involving around ₹17,000 core caused by the collapse of a Ponzi scheme run by Rose Valley Group in West Bengal.

“The charge sheet names all the accused persons and around 35 companies. This is the first time charges have been filed against Subhra Kundu, wife of Gautam Kundu, the arrested owner of Rose Valley. The Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) named her in its complaint but ED did not tag her in its two cases so far,” said Abhijit Bhadra, a senior public prosecutor representing ED.

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“Subhra Kundu has been charged with laundering money through Govind Agarwal, a chartered accountant who has been accused in several cases,” Bhadra added.

In 2014, the Supreme Court asked the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe the scam orchestrated by the West Bengal-based Rose Valley group and also the suspected role of influential people in money laundering. The ED launched a parallel probe into the case.

The investigations are being carried out in West Bengal and Odisha.

Two Trinamool Congress (TMC) Lok Sabha members, Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal were arrested by CBI in 2017.

Bandopadhyay got bail after 136 days but Pal, who was also a popular actor in Bengali cinema, was in judicial custody for around three years. He died in 2020, months after being granted bail.

Subhra Kundu, a former actress, was arrested by CBI from her Kolkata residence in January 2021. She is now in judicial custody in Odisha where CBI filed a case on the basis of complaints lodged by people who invested in Rose Valley.

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The two TMC MPs were also lodged in an Odisha jail. ED arrested Gautam Kundu in 2015. He is in judicial custody at Kolkata’s Presidency correctional home.

Although CBI and ED are investigating several high-profile Ponzi scam cases such as the Saradha and Rose Valley, a trial has not started for these.

The group had allegedly floated a total of 27 companies for running the alleged chit-fund operations out of which only half a dozen were active. It is alleged that the firm had floated the scheme by promising inflated returns on investments between 8% and 27% to gullible investors in various states.