CBI has 50 trunks of stuff on Rajus

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which is probing the Rs 7,800-crore Satyam scam, has claimed that there were new disclosures in the case by the accused including the company’s founder B Ramalinga Raju.

The CBI counsel Ravindranath, while arguing for an extension of CBI custody for Ramalinga Raju, his brother Rama Raju and ex-CFO Srinivas Vadlamani, told a local court that the accused had disclosed “new things” during the interrogation.

“The investigators have seized several documents and incriminating material though they are yet to confront the accused with the fresh evidence,” he told the court.

All the three accused along with two auditors - S Gopalakrishnan and Srinivas Talluri - were in the CBI custody for seven days till Tuesday. The CBI said it needs further custody of the accused for verifying some documents and material that were recently seized from the premises of the accused.

“The CBI has made 27 recoveries so far and the material is in 50 trunks (boxes). This material has been seized from Satyam and the auditor firm Price Waterhouse. But, there is a need to conduct further searches as well,” the prosecutor said.

According to him, the accused had used technology to carry out the fraud, and the seized digital material in the form of hard disks, pen drives and other such equipment has been given to the Forensic
Science Laboratory (FSL) in Hyderabad for analysis.

The CBI has seized five bank statements of different banks and when cross checked, the banks had clarified that the statements were not issued by them, the prosecutor said.

He said that the accused had floated 327 companies and used just 14 addresses for all of them. “Each address has about 50-60 companies against it. We are yet to cross check all these addresses,” he said.

However, the defence counsel said there is no merit in the petition for custody by CBI since the authority is yet to verify the seized material. With the arguments remaining incomplete, the magistrate

Victor Immanuel posted the cases for further hearing to Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has filed a petition seeking permission to question the auditors, who are in the judicial custody. “According to the ICAI rules, the institute has the authority to inquire into the alleged misconduct of its members and the accused in the custody are our members. So, we want to record their statement,” the ICAI counsel told the court. The institute has constituted a five-member inquiry committee and two of these committee members would record the statement of the accused, he said. The magistrate posted the petition for orders on Monday.