Enforcement Directorate summons veteran actor.
By Tathagata Mitra
BANGALORE: Bollywood’s Disco Dancer, Mithun Chakraborty, has been summoned for his supposed ties with the Saradha ponzi scheme or chit fund scam which had cheated lakhs of investors of their hard earned money last year.
Enforcement Directorate (ED) has summoned Mithun to record his statement on a purported transaction in connection with the scam.
“He has been summoned to appear on June 19 in Kolkata. An amount of few crores from Saradha group accounts have gone to the actor’s account and answers related to this and few others are supposed to be put to him by the ED investigators,” sources were quoted as saying in the media.
Mithun, who is an elected Member of Parliament representing Mamata Banerjee’s party Trinamool Congress (TMC), was unavailable for his comments on the matter.
It came to the ED’s knowledge that the Saradha Group had paid Rs. 2 crore to Mithun to act as the brand ambassador of the channel. ED officials got the name of Mithun while they were checking some bank accounts of the group. According to some sources, the main accused in this case, Sudipta Sen, had mentioned Mithun’s name in one of his letters. The yesteryear heartthrob reportedly received Rs. 70 lakhs per month from the Saradha Group.
On the other hand, Shatabdi Roy, one of Mithun’s colleagues in the Tollywood industry, told the media that she has not received any summons from the ED in connection to the Saradha scam. She clarified that though she was the ambassador of the company she was unaware of the group’s malpractices.
This is not the first time a TMC MP has been linked with the scam. Earlier, Kunal Ghosh, a TMC member of the Rajya Sabha, and the former CEO of Saradha Group’s media business, had been arrested by the Special Investigation Team (SIT).
The ED had also called in for questioning Arpita Ghosh, an actress, who was also a member of the Lok Sabha from Balurghat. She was associated with one of the TV channels run by the group.