Punjab CM orders probe into fraud by chit fund company Pearls Group

CHANDIGARH, (PTI): The Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann on Thursday ordered a probe into the alleged fraud committed by a chit fund company, Pearls Group.

Mann shared this information through his Twitter handle. “A high-level probe has been ordered into the chit fund company ‘Pearl’ which created moveable and immovable assets worth billions of rupees by looting people’s hard-earned money of people of Punjab…detail will be made public soon,” said Mann in a tweet.

The Pearls group had allegedly cheated many people in various parts of the country by illegally operating different investment schemes.

Before coming to power, Mann during his election campaign had promised that after the formation of AAP government, the hard-earned money of people, who are the victims of Ponzi scam, will be returned by confiscating assets of chit fund companies. (PTI)

According to a report in The Hindu, last year, the CBI arrested 11 people in a case involving Pearls Group , which allegedly collected about ₹60,000 crore from close to 5.50 crore investors from across the country by floating unauthorised schemes.

Five of the accused, Chander Bhushan Dhillon, Prem Seth, Manmohan Kamal Mahajan, Mohanlal Sehajpal and Kanwaljit Singh Toor, were from the group.

The others, who are businessmen from Delhi, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar and other places, have been identified as Praveen Agarwal, Mannoj Jain, Akash Agarwal, Anil Kumar Khemka, Subhash Agarwal and Rajesh Agarwal.

The CBI had registered a preliminary enquiry on the directions of the Supreme Court against the Pearls Group, which was accused of illegally operating different investment schemes without any statutory approval, to dupe investors.

Based on the findings, it registered a First Information Report against the flagship companies of Pearls Group, PGF Limited and PACL Limited, its then head, Nirmal Singh Bhangoo, and others.

Further probe led to the arrest of Bhangoo, Sukhdev Singh, Subrata Bhattacharya and Gurmeet Singh on January 8, 2016. Subsequently, a charge sheet was filed against some of the accused on April 7, 2016.

Source: PTI & The Hindu