Admin starts repaying ponzi victims

Baripada: Some chit fund victims in Mayurbhanj have heaved a sigh of relief after the district administration started the process of repaying the small depositors Wednesday.
ADM Gangadhar Nayak Wednesday said 178 out of 383 small investors identified will be given their money.
Thousands of small investors are now eagerly waiting for their turn to get back their money from the government in the next phases.
It may be noted here that a number of chit fund companies had tricked thousands of people into investing their hard-earned money in their deposit schemes on the promise of high returns in Mayurbhanj district. The investors failed to get back their money after the ponzi firms started vanishing from the scene by shutting down their branch offices.
Police stations and the district administration then were flooded with written complaints from the chit fund victims. Later, police and Crime Branch had initiated action against some companies and seized their assets.
However, an air of uncertainty loomed over return of the money from the ponzi firms for several years till the government announced a corpus fund of `300 core to pay off the deposits of the investors.
Later, the administration started the process to identify the ponzi victims. The revenue department conducted survey and found 383 small investors (having invested anything between `10,000 or less than that) in the district on the basis of their documents.
The finance department paid `10.86 lakh to the district administration April 2, 2018.
Return of chit fund money to investors was first started in Balasore May 23. Balasore administration made online transfer of over `12.48 lakh into the bank accounts of 200 small depositors.
The process, however, had been delayed in case of Mayurbhanj, it was alleged.
Orissa POST had carried a report of the delay in May. The tehsil administration in Kaptipada and Shymkhunta blocks had not submitted their reports about investors to the district administration.
The investors had warned of agitation if no step was taken to return their money.
The administration took it seriously and hastened the process.
The ADM said that the process to return funds to medium and big investors will start in a phased manner once they were identified on the basis of their applications with valid documents.