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Bengal

What about Pearl chit fund scam, asks TMC

NEW DELHI: Parliament on Monday unanimously passed the Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019, which seeks to put in place a mechanism by which poor depositors will get back their hard-earned money.

The Rajya passed with voice vote the bill which would save gullible investors from ponzi schemes.

The Lok Sabha had passed the bill on July 24, 2019.

The Banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019 replaced the Ordinance on the same.

Replying to a debate on the Bill, Minister of State for Finance Anurag Singh Thakur said the Bill would protect the hard-earned money of the poor people.

The Bill states that the first claim on the recovered money will be of depositors and the proposed legislation also has some exclusion including money collected by real estate firms and from friends and relatives.

Though Trinamool Congress supported the bill it's leader Derek O' Brien posed some uncomfortable questions to the Government. He said, "We don't hear much about the Pearl Chit Fund scam these days. It is a scam involving Rs. 49,000 crore and 5.5 crore investors were affected. It is going on for 20 years and a major constitutional functionary, now not a constitutional functionary, was the legal advisor of the Pearl group." He stopped short of naming the advisor.

He then brought up the Oscar chit fund of Gujarat.

According to him, the Oscar chit fund scam affected 1.2 lakh investors. "This scam spread from Gujarat to Odisha and then Maharashtra. Then, you go to Bengal. From 1980, lots of poor people were duped in the Sanchayita scam of the 1980s. The Bengal Government in the last five, six years has set up a Commission to return the money to those who were duped," the TMC leader added.

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