‘LVS facilitated sale of plot at high price’

HYDERABAD: Besides being charged for his alleged role in reduction of annuity payable to the AP Industrial Infrastructure Corporation for leasing out 235 acres of land in favour of Boulder Hills Leisure Private Limited, senior IAS officer LV Subrahmanyam has been charged with ''facilitating'' the sale of a villa plot in the integrated project developed by Dubaibased Emaar group at an exorbitant price to a buyer.

This, among others, is what has led the Central Bureau of Investigation to include Subrahmanyam's name in the voluminous charge sheet filed before the special CBI court recently in connection with the Emaar Properties-APIIC scam case.

Subrahmanyam is TTD executive officer at present.

Top sources disclosed to Express that Subrahmanyam's name cropped up during the course of investigation when one particular buyer of the plot deposed before the CBI that the officer had played a key role in selling the plot to him and that the villa was sold to him at an exorbitant price while the documents showed a much lower price.

After this buyer had deposed before the CBI a couple of months ago, the agency summoned Subrahmanyam, a 1983-batch IAS officer, for questioning.

The CBI believes that Subrahmanyam abused his official position in the sale of villa plots.

In fact,in its charge sheet the agency said that in carrying out the conspiracy public servants abused their official position and facilitated sale of villa plots at exorbitant rates by private real estate companies while the documents showed much lower prices.

Further, the investigating agency believes that Subrahmanyam and another IAS officer KV Rao (now retired) were instrumental in fixing the lease rentals, detrimental to the interests of APIIC.

''This took place when Subrahmanyam was vice-chairman and managing director of APIIC,'' the sources said.

Besides, the senior IAS officer was charged with fixing the value of 285 acres of land given by the government for the township at Rs 29 lakh per acre whereas the prevailing market rate was Rs 40 lakh an acre.

The CBI further said that three persons _ Emaar-MGF representatives Shravan Gupta, Srikanth Joshi and Vijay Raghavan _ acted as conduits to collect the excess sale proceeds from buyers and the unaccounted money was not reflected in the account books of the Dubai and Hyderabad based real estate firms dealing with the project.