Andhra Pradesh CM YS Rajasekhara Reddy hit back at TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu and said the latter's family members, would meet the same fate as Ramalinga Raju.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on Tuesday hit back at TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu on the Satyam Computer scam and said the latter's family members, promoters of Heritage Foods, too would meet the same fate as Ramalinga Raju over the alleged fraud in the company.
"There is no difference between the financial scandal in Satyam Computer and Heritage Foods. Your family holds 33 per cent stake in Heritage and will land exactly where Ramalinga Raju has now landed (in jail)," Reddy said, replying to a lengthy debate on the Satyam saga in the assembly.
"Had he been alive, (Joseph) Goebbels (the propaganda minister of Adolf Hitler) would have felt ashamed looking at you," an irate chief minister told Naidu, also the Leader of Opposition.
The House witnessed noisy scenes and constant exchange of words between the ruling Congress and the TDP members through the 90-minute reply by the chief minister.
At one stage, legislative affairs minister K Rosaiah rose to move a motion seeking suspension of TDP members from the House for storming the Speaker's podium but the protesters quietly went back to their seats to avoid punishment.
Reddy squarely blamed Naidu, a former CM, for the Satyam scandal and the dubious rise of Raju, who is in jail after he confessed that he cooked the city-based IT firm's books to the tune of over Rs 7,000 crore.
"Efforts to camouflage the financial irregularities in Satyam and protect its promoters were done under your (Naidu)regime," Reddy alleged, citing a letter written by RPI MP Ramdas Athavle in 2003 and also a report by then Income Tax deputy director S Padmaja in 2002.
By enabling Raju to share the dais with then US president Bill Clinton on his trip to Hyderabad in 2000, Naidu as chief minister contributed to the significant rise of Satyam's share value, he said.
As the share value shot up, Raju and his family sold their stake and purchased thousands of acres of land in the name of 300 companies, the CM said.
Three benami companies floated by Raju had donated Rs one crore to the NTR Trust run by Naidu, Reddy added.
Referring to the Satyam scandal, Reddy noted, "this is a very, very sad story. No one had ever imagined that one of the top four software companies in the country would be mired in such a massive fraud. Failure of the Central agencies like SEBI in detecting the fraud is glaring."
He asserted that the Andhra Pradesh CID "did its best" in investigating the fraud in Satyam following the disclosure by Raju on January 7.
"We have taken a clear and conscious decision to save the company and take its fraudulent management to task. It is the responsibility of both the state and the Centre to safeguard the interests of 53,000 employees."
Rebutting the Opposition's allegation that the state government failed to order a CBI probe into the Satyam scandal only to shield the guilty, the CM listed the various letters written by him to the Prime Minister on the issue.
"Have you not dubbed the CBI the Congress Bureau of Investigation? So, why are you so worried about a CBI probe?" Reddy asked Naidu.
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