Rose Valley chief Gautam Kundu outside the ED office in Salt Lake on Thursday. Picture by Mayukh Sengupta

Calcutta, Sept. 25: Rose Valley chairman Gautam Kundu visited the Enforcement Directorate office in Salt Lake today to request that the group be allowed access to the 2,500 bank accounts that the central agency had frozen recently.

Source said Kundu told ED officers that over Rs 300 crore had been kept in the accounts and he needed the money to pay salary to his staff before Puja.

According to the sources, Kundu was asked to submit a written request.

Kundu’s cellphone was switched off this evening.

A media release by the Rose Valley Group said: “Recently, ED has sealed more than 2,500 bank accounts of Rose Valley which includes the salary accounts of more than 10,000 employees of Rose Valley. Mr Kundu had visited the ED office to request senior officer… not to freeze the salary accounts of his employees so that more than 10,000 employees are not deprived of their salaries just before the puja.”

A senior ED officer said the accounts had been frozen on the “basis of suspicion that the money might be siphoned off”.

“The accounts have been frozen to safeguard the money, which we suspect might be that (collected from) investors and depositors,” the officer said.

Sources in the ED’s Delhi office said the accounts were in bank branches in Bengal, Odisha, Assam and Tripura.

Although most of these accounts are in Bengal, the central agency has not been able to probe charges of money laundering against Rose Valley in the state because the police were yet to lodge a criminal complaint till recently, the ED officer said.

Last month, the ED had asked the state home department to initiate cases based on four complaints of cheating the agency received against Rose Valley from depositors.

“We can start a money laundering case only if the police initiate a criminal case by lodging an FIR. Since no case was registered against Rose Valley in Bengal, we had asked the state home department to act on four of the many cheating complaints we received against the group,” the ED officer said.

Saradha

An Alipore court today remanded Assam singer Sadananda Gogoi in judicial custody till October 5 in connection with the Saradha scam.

A division bench of Calcutta High Court headed by Justice Indira Banerjee today rejected the bail plea of businessman Sandhir Agarwal, who was arrested 32 days ago by the CBI in connection with the Saradha scam.