Bhubaneswar: After a prolonged debate and several meetings, the state government has started the process of returning money to small depositors of chit fund scams.
The government has decided to distribute money to the small depositors as per the recommendation of the Judicial Commission headed by Justice MM Das, a source said.
The Commission has submitted four volumes of interim reports to the government and named about 1, 16,504 as small depositors who have deposited up to `10,000 in the chit fund companies. Acting upon the recommendations of the panel, the government has verified the depositors named in Volume I & II and the field verification of depositors named in other two volumes is going on, a source closely associated with the development said.
“The small investors, who have deposited less than `10,000, have been identified and process at field-level has been started to compensate the depositors. There is no doubt in it,” said Finance Minister Sashibhusan Behera.
Finance Secretary TK Pandey has recently written letters to all district collectors in this regard. As per the letter, a team of officials comprising block extension officer, police ASI, revenue inspector or amin of the locality have made field verification to ensure no wrong person will get the compensation amount.
After making field verification, the small depositors have been asked to sign an indemnity bond in the presence of local tehsildar. As the government has waived the stamp duty for signing such bond, the bond has been signed on plain paper, the source said.
After verifying their bank accounts, the teams have submitted their reports to the collector concerned and the latter has to finalize the list. After finalizing it, the collector will deposit the compensated money directly in the bank accounts of the depositors. The government has already released `57 lakh to various districts, in this regard. Very soon, may be within this month end, money will be deposited in the bank accounts of the small investors, the source said.
The collectors were also instructed to start field verification of the small depositors named in Volume III and IV of the Commission’s report. They have been instructed to complete the exercise in a month so that the money will be deposited very soon.The government will provide the compensation amount from its corpus fund set up in 2013.
The source also said that the state government has initiated its own process to indentify the investors of Rose Valley, a chit fund company. The government first invited applications from the duped investors and now, verifying them.
After completion of the verification process, the government will submit the details of duped investors along with the details of attached properties of Rose Valley at the designated court set up as per the provisions of the Odisha Protection of Interest of Depositors (in Financial Establishment) Act, 2015. The compensation amount will be provided to the investors as per the order of designated court, the source added.
The same process will be followed in the cases of other 16 companies, whose properties have been attached by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of police.
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