HYDERABAD: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday filed the chargesheet in the APIIC- Emaar Properties scam against seven accused persons and five private companies before the Special Judge for CBI cases.
Thevoluminous chargesheet includes names of senior IAS officer LV Subrahmanyam, who is presently posted as TTD Executive Officer, besides arrested IAS officer BP Acharya and a retired IAS officer Vishveshwara Rao.
The name of Madhu Koneru, son of industrialist Koneru Prasad (already arrested), is also included.
According to a press release issued by the CBI headquarters in Delhi, the investigation has revealed that the accused carried out a conspiracy between 2002 and 2010 to defraud the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) and thereby the state government, in the sale of villa plots, apartments and other ventures pertaining to the Integrated Project at Manikonda, Hyderabad.
In carrying out the conspiracy, the public servants abused their official positions and facilitated sale of villa plots at exorbitant rates by private real estate companies while remitting documents of much lower prices. The chargesheet also accused the officials of being instrumental in fixing the lease rentals detrimental to the interest of APIIC. CBI further said that three persons - Shravan Gupta, Emaar-MGF representative, Srikanth Joshi, representative of Emaar and Vijay Raghav - acted as conduits to collect excess sale prices from buyers and the unaccounted money was not reflected in the account books of the Dubai and Hyderabadbased real estate firms dealing with the project.
Hence, the same could not be shared with APIIC, which had 26% stake in the project.
The CBI f i l e d the chargesheet under sections 120-B, 420, 109, 409, 477-A of IPC and Section 13(2) read with 13(1)(c) & (d) and section 15 of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 Besides the IAS officers, the CBI has named four private persons and five Dubai & Hyderabad-based real estate private companies. 286 witnesses have been cited in the chargesheet and 1,834 documents have been filed along with the chargesheet, running into 300 pages.
The CBI, however, did not add the names of Sunil Reddy, a close aide of Kadapa MP Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, and Gangaraju Venkata Vijay Raghav in the initial chargesheet.
It is likely that their names would be in the supplementary chargesheet to be filed later. “Further investigation is in progress. The role of other accused persons is being investigated,” the CBI said in the release. In the chargesheet, the CBI stated that as per the agreement, 36 of the 136 villa plots were to be sold at the prevalent market rates.
Emaar MGF Land Limited sold 34 villas, of which 16 were sold by Gupta, Joshi and Vijay Raghav by collecting a price above the documented rate of Rs 5,000 per square yard. The CBI found criminal conspiracy between Shravan Gupta, Srikanth Joshi and Vijay Raghav who booked 18 villa plots in the name of 10 companies (seven in Delhi and three in Ernakulam) at Rs 5,000 during 2010 when the prevalent market rates were around Rs 50,000 per square yard.