**Bhubaneswar:** In the latest development in the Artha Tatwa (AT) Chit Fund case, the Special CBI court here has asked the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) to complete interrogation within a month.
The SFIO is to interrogate Artha Tatwa CMD Pradeep Sethy, Jyoti Prakash Jayprakash, Srikrushna Padhi, Deepak Parekh and Manoj Patnaik.
Notably, Sethy started the chit fund group in 2010 after registering his organisations under the Companies Act and the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act. Sethy collected money from small investors in Orissa with a promise of high returns ranging from 15 to 20 per cent.
Sethy has been on judicial remand in the Bhubaneswar jail since May 2013 after his arrest by Odisha CID police that initially probed the chit fund companies till the CBI took over the investigations in May 2014 following a SC order.
The CBI had already submitted two chargesheets against Sethy, former BJD MLA Pravat Tripathy, former Advocate General Ashok Mohanty, deputy SP Pramod Panda, Bollywood model coordinator Priti Bhatia, media house owners Madhu Mohanty and Manoj Das, in the Artha Tatwa scam.
CBI has estimated that AT group swindled around Rs 1,200 crore from thousands of investors across the state.
