Money laundering: CBI raids TMC MP’s flats

Subhrangshu Gupta

Kolkata, March 4

The CBI, which has been probing the alleged involvement of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in the Saradha’s multi-crore rupee chit fund scam, has detected the TMC’s link with another similar organisation — Rose Valley Corporation.

The CBI’s interrogation of the employees of the organisation and official documents revealed that TMC MP, film actor Tapas Paul, had been a director of the organisation and used to regularly visit its office at Salt Lake.

Tapas Paul, who was brought into the TMC by party supremo Mamata Banerjee, is now an MP from Krishnanagar in Nadia district. The actor-turned-politician was first elected as a MLA from Alipore in place of the incumbent Saugata Roy and later, he won two successive Lok Sabha polls from the Krishnanagar seat.

A seven-member CBI team today raided and searched two of Tapas’ flats in south Kolkata for over two hours. They questioned several residents at the housing complex and seized several documents.

TMC’s former all-India secretary Mukul Roy, who was interrogated by the CBI for the TMC’s alleged involvement in the Saradha scam, had earlier admitted that they held a secret meeting in the Dello hills in Darjeeling with Saradha proprietor Sudipta Sen and Rose Valley chairman Gautam Kundu in the presence of CM Mamata Banerjee, who wanted to keep the matter “secret”.

The CBI today simultaneously raided 27 other places in and around Kolkata and 40 other places in Assam, Tripura, Orissa, Jharkhand, Bihar and UP in connection with their inquiry into the money-laundering by the Rose Valley Corporation.