-The Indian Express Kolkata: Saradha Realty Ltd, which has gone bust now, may be just the beginning of the unfolding of a deeply entrenched Ponzi scheme network involving dozens of other companies in West Bengal, some of which also wield considerable media power given their ownership of television channels and newspapers. According to information available with the union corporate affairs and finance ministries, six companies, against whom market regulator Securities and Exchange...

-The Times of India The collapse of Saradha Group, promoted by Sudipta Sen, is the greatest threat yet to Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress regime in Bengal. It could also imperil the finances of millions of people in Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Trinamool's blatant association with the bigwigs of Saradha, which raised vast amounts of money from poor people before collapsing, is a potentially fatal political body blow....

-PTI Mamata Banerjee stages reversal of former apathy towards fate of those affected by Saradha Group demise Kolkata: West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee staged a reversal of her former apathy towards the fate of those whose savings had disappeared amid the collapse of the deposit-taking Saradha Group. Having said on Monday that "what has gone, has gone", Banerjee on Wednesday announced a 10 percentage point hike in value-added tax (VAT) on tobacco...

-The Economic Times For many, it is a sense of deja vu. Fifteen years ago, the government and India's financial regulators came under fire after hundreds of crores were cleaned up by a few individuals and entities from gullible investors, who were promised fabulous returns from plantation schemes. In the uproar that followed, the government and the regulators sought to palm off the responsibility of regulation of such schemes on each...

-PTI KOLKATA: The West Bengal government has stepped in for damage control after chit fund company Saradha Group went bust reviving memories of the collapse of Sanchayita Investments in the early eighties when several investors and agents committed suicide. Sanchayita collected more than Rs 120 crore in 1980 before its offices were raided and it folded up with only a handful of people getting back a minuscule amount of money. Two main...