Sahara pins hopes on Rs 24,000 crore lifeline

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Editor's note: The Sahara group could well be sitting on a ticking time bomb. It already faces a situation of delayed payments to thousands of members of its four pan-India cooperative societies. The crisis was flagged last August when a joint secretary of cooperatives and central registrar of cooperative societies in the Ministry of Agriculture wrote to the Ministry of Corporate Affairs asking for an investigation by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office into the cooperatives run by the Sahara group. Till that time, the popular impression was that Sahara’s controversial chief promoter, Subrata Roy, was beleaguered as his fundraising efforts had been shut down by the Reserve Bank of India and the group’s funds seized by market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India. In an explosive letter, reported by The Indian Express and Moneylife, joint secretary Vivek Aggarwal said that he had received close to 15,000 complaints over eight months against the four cooperative societies. These cooperatives, he said, had raised Rs 86,673 crore over 10 years (since 2010). Aggarwal passed several strictures against the cooperatives, which had raised money from …