As union min, A Raja took Rs 4.5 crore to give real estate firm infra status: CBI chargesheet
CHENNAI: The chargesheet filed by CBI indicting former union minister and DMK’s sitting Nilgiris MP A Raja in a 2015 disproportionate asset case, alleged he granted infrastructure status to a Gurugram-based real estate firm to build a hotel in Kancheepuram in exchange for money.
This took place when Raja was Union Environment Minister in 2007, as per the chargesheet. The chargesheet, filed in August 2022, alleged that the real estate firm routed the payment of Rs 4.56 crore to Raja through a company named Kovai Shelters Private Limited, belonging to C Krishnamurthy, a close aide of the ex-minister. Raja’s relatives are also directors in the firm.
The CBI had booked Raja for amassing assets worth Rs 5.53 crore disproportionate to his known sources of income. According to the chargesheet, Raja gave infrastructure status to the Gurugram- based firm in January 2007 for which the payment of Rs 4.56 crore was received through Kovai Shelters the next month.
Kovai Shelters used the money to buy land in the periphery of Coimbatore, ostensibly to develop as stand alone plots but the CBI claimed its probe revealed the company was neither into any realty business nor were any plots developed. Even the agreement Kovai Shelters signed with the Gurugram firm for the commission for purchase of land was a forg ed one, the chargesheet said.
Raja assets 579% disproportionate, says CBI probe
The chargesheet regarding the 15-year-old incident alleged that, as a minister, Raja garnered assets worth Rs 5.53 crore, including the payment of Rs 4.56 crore to the company in which his close relatives were directors, which he could not satisfactorily account for.
According to the Central Bureau of Investigation, the assets garnered were disproportionate to the tune of 579% of Raja’s known sources of income. Aside from Raja, 16 people have been booked in the case.
Among them are Raja’s nephew Parmesh, wife Parameswari (now deceased), Krishnamurthy, wife of Sadiq Basha, an alleged associate of Raja who had died by suicide, and Reha Banu, a director in Greenhouse Promoters, a company which was earlier owned by Basha.