Saradha ponzi scheme was the brain child of Sudipta Sen who started off by buying up small plots of land across West Bengal. Lakhs of agents were then appointed who raised money from mostly poor people promising land ownership or stakes in tourism projects. The scamsters are said to have collected hundreds of crores from over 1.7 million depositors.
Saradha ponzi scheme was the brain child of Sudipta Sen who started off by buying up small plots of land across West Bengal. Lakhs of agents were then appointed who raised money from mostly poor people promising land ownership or stakes in tourism projects. The scamsters are said to have collected hundreds of crores from over 1.7 million depositors.
The ponzi scheme, where money raised from one person is used to pay off another in a continuous process, ran smoothly till Sen, emboldened by the mammoth scale of operations, started having dreams of expanding to other states. Political ambitions also crept in as a future presence in the Parliament would have secured his business fortunes. This brought him close to Trinamool leaders, some of whom like Kunal Ghosh and transport minister Madan Mitra. For Trinamool, Sen was the white knight, who secretly funded the party's ascent to power in Bengal in 2011. Saradha chief then aligned his ambition with that of Trinamool as both of them started to plan a national presence.
This made Sen venture into the media business, opening several newspapers in Bengali, Urdu and English, and also TV channels. The media venture starting off from Bengal but with plans to reach out across the country would be with an unified editorial thrust to promote Trinamool Congress and project Mamata Banerjee as the future prime minister.
But for other Trinamool Congress leaders under Mamata, Sudipta was the proverbial goose, ready to lay the golden egg every time a phone call or a personal visit to him were made. As funds drained out quickly, Sen, sensing his empire would crumble soon, planned a daring escape, possibly to another country. His luck ran out in Srinagar in April last year where he was arrested. CBI later took up the investigation and arrested Kunal, Madan, businessman Srinjoy Bose and several of their assistants like former police chief Rajat Majumder.
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