HYDERABAD: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a prosecution complaint before the Special Court for PMLA cases at Hyderabad against the state Congress working president and Malkajgiri MP Anumula Revanth Reddy, TDP MLA from Sathupally Sandra Venkata Veeraiah and several other accused in connection with the cash for vote scam that shook the two Telugu states in 2015.
The investigation has established that Revanth Reddy, Sandra Venkata Veeraiah and the other accused had conspired to bribe nominated MLA Elvis Stephenson for securing his vote in favour of Vem Narender Reddy, a candidate proposed by the Telugu Desam Party in the MLC election that was scheduled in June 2015, the ED said in a release on Thursday.
Former Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu's name also cropped up in the case after the ACB found an audio clip purportedly of him speaking to Stephenson and assuring that he would honour the commitment, indicating that Revanth was acting on his instructions. However, Chandrababu Naidu was not charged with the offence, it was found.
The ED initiated the investigation in 2019 on the basis of a case registered by the Telangana ACB in 2015. The prosecution also named the other accused in the case -- Bishop Harry Sebastian, Revanth's associates Rudra Sivakumar and Uday Simha and TDP leader Vem Narender Reddy's son Vem Krishna Keerthan and Mathaiah Jerusalem -- in the complaint.
The ED had also recorded the statements of A Revanth Reddy and other accused persons Harry Sebastian and Rudra Udaysimha who were involved in the actual handing over of the bribe amount of Rs 50 lakh to the MLA Elvis Stephenson. They were also confronted with the available audio-visual recordings of the encounters. As part of the conspiracy, they contacted Elvis Stephenson and offered him a bribe of Rs 5 crore. Elvis Stephenson made a complaint to the ACB and a 'trap' was laid and his encounters with the accused were secretly audio-video recorded.
The accused met Stephenson at his house on May 30, 2015 and made the bribe offer. Later on May 31, A Revanth Reddy, R Harry Sebastian and Rudra Udaysimha came to Elvis Stephenson's friend Malcolm Taylor's house to hand over the advance bribe amount of Rs 50 lakh in cash and were trapped by the ACB. The bribe amount was seized and they were taken into custody. The said the cash was handed over to the accused by Vem Krishna Keerthan, son of Vem Narender Reddy, to help his father in the election.
The ED has provisionally attached the seized amount under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. Investigations further established that the accused committed the offence as well as the offence of money laundering by dealing with the bribe money which is nothing but proceeds of crime as per PMLA. Following this, ED filed a prosecution complaint against Revanth Reddy and five other accused to hold trial for the offence of money laundering.