HYDERABAD: Sleuths of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) described disgraced former Satyam chairman, B Ramalinga Raju and other accused in the Rs 7,000 crore financial fraud as “hard nuts to crack.” On the first day of their interrogation by a team of CBI officials, Ramalinga Raju, yet again, parroted the same version as he had mentioned in his e-mail to SEBI on January 7.
“Ramalinga Raju and four other accused were confronted with a bunch of documents each time they lied.
Though they are hard nuts to crack, they came out with some key information because of the documents available with us,” sources disclosed to Express.
Ramalinga Raju, Rama Raju, former Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Vadlamani Srinivas and the two former auditors of PricewaterhouseCoopers - - S Gopalakrishnan and Talluri Srinivas -- who were lodged in the Chanchalguda prison, were handed over to the CBI officials this morning. The Court has granted their custody to CBI for seven days.
Though, officials of the AP Crime Investigation Department (CID) (who were previously investigating the fraud) had provided luxury cars for the Raju brothers for driving them in and out of Chanchalguda prison while in their custody, the CBI sleuths treated them just like any other accused and drove them in a police van. Terming it as `substantial progress’ in the case, sources said that it was only after Raju and other accused were confronted with documents that they revealed some information.
“Ramalinga Raju was repeating the same lines as he had mentioned in his email to SEBI. We grilled him and others about their roles in the entire scam, how each of them perpetrated the offence,” sources said.
Further, whenever they tried to conceal some information, the CBI officials once again confronted them some of the Satyam employees, who, gave much in-sight to the CBI officials about the entire financial fraud.
All the five accused will be grilled between 10 a.m and 5 p.m. at the Dilkusha guest house on the Raj Bhavan road and at the night, they will be shifted to the nearby police station.