HYDERABAD: The Andhra Pradesh CID on Monday told the High Court that there are over 160 sister companies for scam hit Agri Gold company though the latter had earlier claimed of 80 such companies. With the state forensic laboratory unable to decode some of the material, the hard disks seized by the CID have been sent to the Central forensic laboratory, it said.
Special counsel of AP Krishna Prakash was making this submission before a division bench of the court comprising Justice V Ramasubramanian and Justice S V Bhatt dealing with a batch petitions filed by Agri Gold Depositors and Agents Welfare Association and others seeking CBI probe into the scam and for recovery of the depositors money.
The special counsel said that the fraudulent activities of the scam hit company were coming out in the ongoing forensic audit of the computer hard disks which were seized by the probe agency. Based on such findings only the CID was effecting arrests of other directors of the company who were not investigated so far. Most of them were absconding and the CID has gone to their residences and offices. There was no truth in the allegation made by the company counsel that the CID officers were behaving in a high-handed manner with the family members of the said directors, he added.
Meanwhile, the bench directed the state authorities to make use of the e-portal of the AP government for online auction sale of the identified properties of Agri Gold company. The bench made it clear that the properties worth over Rs 50 crore in value would be auctioned directly by the court in open auction and the properties which are below Rs 50 crore would be put up for online auction sale through e-portal. The court would supervise the online auction process, it added.
The Court directed the banks to submit a list of Agri Gold properties mortgaged with them so that they can be sold separately and proceeds realised. The question of disbursing those amounts would be dealt with later.
Dealing with Akshaya Gold case, the bench said that the methodology adopted in Agri Gold would be implemented for sale of attached properties of Akshaya Gold company.
While adjourning the case to next Monday, the bench directed the CID to prepare a list of properties segregating them according to their value.