Bhubaneswar, Jan. 6: The CBI today arrested the chief of money deposit collection company Swastik India, Ranjan Das, for allegedly duping investors of nearly Rs 50 crore.

Two managing directors of the company, Sabyasachi Pani and Pramod Parida, were also arrested.

The CBI had arrested Das, an aide of BJD's Banki MLA Pravat Tripathy, last year for his alleged involvement in another money laundering scam by Artha Tatwa (AT) Group. Das was out on bail on health grounds.

A CBI official said the 42-year-old Das, who was a co-founder of the AT Group, came out of the company and floated Swastik India, along with some of his former employees in 2011.

"The company allegedly raised crores from investors through several schemes," said a CBI official.

The company was also promising returns between nine and 15 per cent on the schemes.

In 2013, Sundargarh and Bargarh police had registered two cases of cheating against the company.

The preliminary charge sheet prepared by the CBI against the AT Group had indicted Das of receiving Rs 25.5 lakh from the company. It also mentioned that Das, the director of Odisha State Cooperative Union, along with Tripathy, had played a vital role in the registration of the cooperative society of the AT Group.

In July last year, the CBI had raided 13 offices of Swastik India in Bhubaneswar, Balasore, Bhadrak, Sundargarh and Jharsuguda.

Das was also in the news for his links with the BJD. Das, who used to attend the party's programmes, was allegedly a signatory of the nomination papers filed by chief minister Naveen Patnaik for the post of the party president in January 2013. Later, the BJD had said that Das was not a signatory to the nomination.

The police had arrested Das in July last year for allegedly attacking and threatening a photographer of a vernacular newspaper.