Live Mint reports the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Maharashtra police is to find if scores of illegal collective investment schemes (CIS) recommended to it for investigation by the capital markets regulator are operating as multi-state cooperative societies.
Earlier, Sebi had referred 162 cases related to entities running collective investment to various agencies including the Reserve Bank of India, company affairs ministry, income tax department, Maharashtra government and the EOW, for investigations. The cases referred to EOW include several entities registered as multi-state cooperative societies with the Union ministry of agriculture and cooperation.
Of the total 1,275 such multi-state cooperative societies registered societies in the country, Maharashtra alone has 559.
According to the Mint report, there has been an unusual spike in registration of fly by night societies from 2010. Officials explain this in terms of the 2002 Act giving a lot of autonomy to these societies.