Chief of Shree Venkatesh Films, Shrikant Mohta, has been arrested by the CBI in connection with the Rose Valley Chit Fund scam and will be produced before the Court tomorrow, ANI has reported. He is likely to be taken to Bhubaneshwar after he was arrested in Kolkata.
#UDATE: Shree Venkatesh Films chief Shrikant Mohta who has been arrested by the CBI in Kolkata today, in connection with Rose Valley chit fund scam, will be taken to Bhubaneswar tonight. He will be produced in Court tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/LqJEzmlJZr
— ANI (@ANI) January 24, 2019
The Bengali Film Producer and Distributor was interrogated by the CBI at his offices earlier in the day. He was served a notice by the agency regarding “acceptance of money from Rose Valley”. According to reports, the private security guards of Mohta tried to stop the CBI team from arresting him. CBI was able to arrest Mohta with the help of local police later on.
Shrikant Mohta is close to West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Several top leaders of the Trinamool Congress are named in the chit fund scam and facing investigation.
It is alleged that Mohta’s production house was paid Rs 25 crore by Rose Valley for producing 17 films.
Earlier Mohra was in the news for encroaching land of Calcutta Port Trust and building a studio on the land. The Calcutta High Court had ordered his firm to vacate the land after a petition by the port trust.
The investigation into chit fund scams has seen plenty of developments involving high-profile individuals recently. The Enforcement Directorate (ED), which is also investigating the matter, had interrogated Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Pal for nine hours on Monday, in relation to the case. ED had asked Pal and his wife to come for questioning. Pal was the director of the film division of the Rose Valley Group.
The CBI has also recently filed a chargesheet against Nalini Chidambaram, wife of former union minister and Congress leader P Chidambaram, in the Saradha chit fund scam.
The Rose Valley Chit Fund was actually a Ponzi scheme in which the entities affiliated to the group collected large sums of money from gullible investors promising them astronomical returns. The Company also allegedly made cross investments in its various sister firms to escape its liability towards its investors. An FIR was registered by the ED against its Chairman and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in 2014. He was later arrested in 2015.
