Taj Mahal sold in US; gets just one-tenth of asked price

NEW YORK: Thousands of miles away from India's very own Taj Mahal, which recently made to the world's seven wonders list, a namesake is being sold in a small Pennsylvania city -- that too at about one-tenth of the price asked by the seller.

A four-storey 72,000 square feet building in the town of Coundersport, US, was once the corporate headquarters of Adelphia Communications Corporation and has got a highest bid of 3.4 million dollars in an auction that continued for over three weeks.

The seller had put the 'suggested value' of the building at 30 million dollars.

The building is known as 'Taj Mahal' or mausoleum among the locals of the city. A mausoleum is a building constructed as a monument enclosing the burial chamber of a deceased person.

The building got the Taj Mahal name because of Adelphia sinking into bankruptcy even before it could house the company's office.

The building was constructed by Adelphia founder John Rigas before the company filed for bankruptcy in 2002 amid allegations of an internal fraud and debt increasing to billions of dollars.

The construction work was yet to complete when Adelphia, one of the five largest cable companies in the US, sank into bankruptcy.

In 2004, John Rigas along with his son and former CFO Timothy Rigas were convicted on charges of fraud. The Rigas family has left the company, which subsequently moved out of Coundersport to a new headquarters in Colarado.