Five days after the Supreme Court ordered CBI to investigate B S Yeddyurappa’s alleged illegal transactions with mining companies, investigators carried out a series of searches at the homes and offices of the former Karnataka chief minister and members of his family. Offices of mining firms which allegedly paid enterprises run by the family to facilitate the mining of iron ore were also searched.

Apprehending arrest, Yeddyurappa, his sons and a son-in-law applied for anticipatory bail at a special CBI court. Sources in Delhi said Additional Solicitor General Mohan Parasaran is being flown to Bangalore to oppose the plea when it is heard on Thursday.

The searches in Bangalore, Shimoga and Bellary districts were carried out after the special court registered an FIR filed by CBI on the basis of the Supreme Court’s May 11 order. Former housing minister S N Krishnaiah Shetty was also named in the FIR.

Yeddyurappa’s homes, the office of his family-run Prerna Educational and Social Trust, the office of Davalagiri Properties, a company run by his sons, and offices of the JSW-linked South West Mining Company were searched. CBI sources said documents, bank account details and papers related to land were seized.

The CBI case against Yeddyurappa and others for conspiracy, cheating, corruption and violation of the Karnataka Land (Restriction on Transfer) Act, 1991, is based on the April 20, 2011 recommendation made to the Supreme Court by the Central Empowered Committee (CEC) for a probe into the receipt, in March 2010 (when Yeddyurappa was chief minister), of Rs 20 crore as donations by Prerna from South West Mining and others.

Yeddyurappa, who on Monday “temporarily postponed” plans to quit the Assembly in protest against alleged efforts to sideline him in the Karnataka BJP, described the day as the most painful of his life.

“I have great regard for CBI. I will cooperate with it. I hope the truth will come out. They raided my houses in Shimoga. I told them to take all documents. It is the most painful day in my life. My sons and I will come out clean,” he said.

The Karnataka Lokayukta police had raided the former chief minister’s sons in connection with over a dozen corruption cases earlier this year.

The CEC and Lokayukta have alleged that the transactions involving JSW-linked companies and Yeddyurappa’s family are connected to an application for a mining lease made by JSW, and to the continuation of a joint venture mining agreement between JSW and the state-run Mysore Minerals Ltd.

The CEC also recommended investigations against the September 2009 and October 2010 grant of 330 acres of land in Shimoga to mining businessman Praveen Chandra, who invested Rs 6 crore in two instalments in Davalagiri Developers and Bhagath Homes, firms run by Yeddyurappa’s two sons and son-in-law R N Sohan Kumar.

The focus of the CBI investigation against Yeddyurappa is currently on why Prerna trust got Rs 10 crore in two instalments on March 17 and 18, 2010, from South West Mining, followed by another two instalments of Rs 3.4 crore each and one instalment of Rs 3.2 crore, from JSW-linked firms Industrial Techno Manpower Services, Jai Bharath Technical and Real Technical Solutions, even when the companies were doing badly financially.

The investigations will be led by a CBI Special Investigation Team headed by IG V V Lakshmi Narayana who probed the Reddy brothers, Kadapa MP Jaganmohan Reddy and the Satyam scam.

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Source : The Indian Express

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said that financial irregularities were all-pervasive during the five-year tenure of Mayawati and affected practically every segment of the society. Yadav said that over Rs 40,000 crore were misappropriated in schemes ranging from eco parks to the NRHM.

The government would soon set up a commission to bring the probes into various scams under a single investigating authority along with inquiries recommended by the Lok Ayukta against a number of ministers in the previous government, Yadav said on Tuesday here.

People usually tend to take into account the money spent on a project as its net worth of the scam. But the actual cost of these projects turn out to be much higher, Akhilesh said. "When government makes such assessments, it includes the cost of land used, value of the existing structure razed to the ground for the new project, the repeated changes in design and construction work - all of this directly amounts to losses to the state exchequer," the chief minister said.

As per the government's estimates, the total worth of scams during the BSP rule is over Rs 40,000 crore, which is almost equal to the annual outlay for the state during 2011 - 2012 and is nearly one-fourth of the state's annual budget of Rs 1.89 lakh crore.

The major scams which had allegedly taken place during the Mayawati regime and are under the SP government's scanner are NRHM scam, toilet scam, elephant statues scam, Noida land scam, High Security Registration Plates (HSRP) tender scam, seed scam, etc. Investigations and inquiries are under way in each of these scams and in 50% of the cases, arrests have also been made leaving hardly any scope of doubt over allegations of misappropriation.

Though investigations into these scams have led to the arrest of bureaucrats and even senior ministers in the BSP government, the investigators are yet to establish a possible direct link between the misappropriations and the then chief minister Mayawati.

However, senior SP ministers have started accusing Mayawati of being directly involved in the scams. On Monday, health and family welfare minister Ahmed Hasan said: "Mayawati's name is also figuring in the NRHM scam." Another senior minister Azam Khan said that the allegations being levelled by the SP all these years are turning out to be true.

On Tuesday, former UP chief minister Rajnath Singh joined the chorus saying: "It is virtually impossible that such huge amounts were swindled and the then chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati was neither aware nor involved in the whole thing. Such huge sums of money cannot be swindled without the consent and interest of the chief minister," Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday.

But the BSP says that the accusations of scams were a mere political gimmick. Party's state president Swami Prasad Maurya said Mayawati had been the only chief minister till date to have taken stringent action against her own ministers and MLAs when ever they were found taking the law in their hand. "Name me one chief minister to have done this?" he questioned. "All this hype about the scams is being cooked up only to cover-up the government's failure in controlling the crime situation in the state," the SP state president said.

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Source : The Times of India

LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said that financial irregularities were all-pervasive during the five-year tenure of Mayawati and affected practically every segment of the society. Yadav said that over Rs 40,000 crore were misappropriated in schemes ranging from eco parks to the NRHM.

The government would soon set up a commission to bring the probes into various scams under a single investigating authority along with inquiries recommended by the Lok Ayukta against a number of ministers in the previous government, Yadav said on Tuesday here.

People usually tend to take into account the money spent on a project as its net worth of the scam. But the actual cost of these projects turn out to be much higher, Akhilesh said. "When government makes such assessments, it includes the cost of land used, value of the existing structure razed to the ground for the new project, the repeated changes in design and construction work - all of this directly amounts to losses to the state exchequer," the chief minister said.

As per the government's estimates, the total worth of scams during the BSP rule is over Rs 40,000 crore, which is almost equal to the annual outlay for the state during 2011 - 2012 and is nearly one-fourth of the state's annual budget of Rs 1.89 lakh crore.

The major scams which had allegedly taken place during the Mayawati regime and are under the SP government's scanner are NRHM scam, toilet scam, elephant statues scam, Noida land scam, High Security Registration Plates (HSRP) tender scam, seed scam, etc. Investigations and inquiries are under way in each of these scams and in 50% of the cases, arrests have also been made leaving hardly any scope of doubt over allegations of misappropriation.

Though investigations into these scams have led to the arrest of bureaucrats and even senior ministers in the BSP government, the investigators are yet to establish a possible direct link between the misappropriations and the then chief minister Mayawati.

However, senior SP ministers have started accusing Mayawati of being directly involved in the scams. On Monday, health and family welfare minister Ahmed Hasan said: "Mayawati's name is also figuring in the NRHM scam." Another senior minister Azam Khan said that the allegations being levelled by the SP all these years are turning out to be true.

On Tuesday, former UP chief minister Rajnath Singh joined the chorus saying: "It is virtually impossible that such huge amounts were swindled and the then chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati was neither aware nor involved in the whole thing. Such huge sums of money cannot be swindled without the consent and interest of the chief minister," Rajnath Singh said on Tuesday.

But the BSP says that the accusations of scams were a mere political gimmick. Party's state president Swami Prasad Maurya said Mayawati had been the only chief minister till date to have taken stringent action against her own ministers and MLAs when ever they were found taking the law in their hand. "Name me one chief minister to have done this?" he questioned. "All this hype about the scams is being cooked up only to cover-up the government's failure in controlling the crime situation in the state," the SP state president said.

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Source : The Times of India

New Delhi:  Will A Raja finally get bail today? After 15 months in jail, the former Telecom Minister's fate will be decided today by the Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court trying the 2G case. This is the first time since his arrest in February 2011 that Mr Raja has applied for bail. Within hours of the Supreme Court granting bail to former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura last week, Mr Raja's lawyers moved the trial court for bail. Mr Raja is one of the three public servants charged in the 2G spectrum scam, and the only accused in the case who is still behind bars.

Mr Raja's lawyers have argued that he must be granted bail on grounds of parity as all the other 13 accused in the case are already out on bail. They say Mr Raja is innocent, the case against him false and fabricated and unsustainable in law and that he's likely to be acquitted. They've also argued that Mr Raja cannot tamper with evidence as all the necessary evidence is already in the CBI's possession. They say Mr Raja has been in judicial custody for the longest time and he has been the most cooperative among all the accused. 

The CBI, which has described Mr Raja as the mastermind of the 2G spectrum scam, has opposed his bail plea. The probe agency says that recent investigation has thrown up new evidence linking him to more bribe money and the argument of parity doesn't hold in his case as the other accused have not been charged with accepting a bribe. The CBI also says that many crucial witnesses hail from the former minister's state of Tamil Nadu and he may therefore try to influence them and tamper with evidence. 

Mr Raja has been charged with criminal breach of trust by a public servant, cheating, criminal conspiracy, forgery and accepting a bribe. If found guilty, he faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment. 

Along with Mr Raja, DMK MP Kanimozhi, former Telecom Secretary Siddharth Behura and some of the country's top telecom bosses - UNITECH promoter Sanjay Chandra, Swan and DB Realty promoters Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka, top executives of Reliance - Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair, Surendra Pipara - Promoter of Cineyug Films Karim Morani among the big names - have been charged with conspiring and manipulating the allocation of 2G spectrum and licences, in 2008, at throwaway prices, thereby causing a massive loss to the exchequer. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has pegged the loss at Rs.1.76 lakh crore, a figure that has been contested by many. 

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Source :NDTV

BANGALORE: In an embarrassment to BJP, sulking former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa today praised Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her party for being supportive of leaders facing trouble "unlike" his own party. 

Upping the ante, Yeddyurappa also attacked his successor Sadananda Gowda calling him a "betrayer" for not vacating the chief ministership in six months to pave the way for his return to the post from which he quit after the Lokayukta report on illegal mining indicted him in July last year. 

Yeddyurappa's outburst came as the ruling BJP was hit by a fresh crisis after nine ministers loyal to him submitted their resignations to him yesterday and gunned for Gowda's removal. 

"I have to praise Sonia Gandhi. I noticed that Congress party and its people are united and supportive if any one of their party members gets into trouble. They help each other and resolve the problems," he said addressing a gathering at a function here. 

Venting his anger over BJP not being supportive of him after the Supreme Court ordered a CBI probe into his alleged involvement in illegal mining during his tenure, Yeddyurappa said: "In Congress whenever a prominent leader faces allegations, that party rises to protect him and tell people that law will take its own course." 

"But in BJP, people will be waiting for a person to get into problems and to sideline him. In BJP, people try to pull the chair and grab someone else's position also," he said. 

70-year old Lingayat strongman, who is entangled in a spate of corruption cases, has made repeated attempts to regain chief ministership but the central leadership had made it clear that he has to come clean in the charges levelled against him for his reinstatment.

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Source : The Times of India

NEW DELHI: The hostility between home minister P Chidambaram and BJP flared up again on Thursday, with both sides locking horns over the allegation that the former finance minister had misused his office to help his son Karti acquire business interests in telecom operator Aircel.

Tempers flared, sharp words were exchanged and Lok Sabha was repeatedly interrupted on Thursday as BJP's charge that home minister Chidambaram had an interest in the Aircel-Maxis deal was angrily rebutted by Congress benches.

The House plunged into turmoil after senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha alleged a "big scam" and said Karti picked up a 5% stake in Maxis, a Malaysian company, ahead of a controversial takeover by Indian telecom firm Aircel. With finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is also the leader of House, present on the occasion, chaos reigned supreme.

Later in the afternoon, just after lunch, Chidambaram read out a clarification issued by Karti amid the din denying that he or any member of his family had acquired or held any stake in Aircel or Maxis. He added that he had no interests in any telecom company.

BJP's attack, part of an on-going offensive against the home minister, is based on Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy's allegation that Chidambaram as finance minister delayed the FIPB clearance for Aircel-Maxis until Karti got a share in Aircel Televentures Ltd owned by C Sivashankaran.

"I categorically state that neither me nor any member of my family have acquired or hold any stake in Aircel or Maxis. The person is known to make wild and reckless allegations. It is deeply regretted that the privileged forum of Parliament is misused to level wild and reckless allegations against a private citizen," Chidambaram said.

Using a dramatic turn of phrase, he borrowed from the Bible to exclaim: "God, forgive them for they know not what they do. I pray that God will forgive the sins of these people" while alluding to the shouting BJP benches.

BJP's attempts to corner Chidambaram, however, did not quite succeed, as the minister forcefully rebutted the charge. He, in fact, walked up to the TV crew in front of Parliament to reject the allegation. He had support from his Congress colleagues as they insisted that no evidence had been produced to establish whether any alleged payment to Aircel actually led to a transfer of shares.

However, the latest confrontation seems set to escalate into a long drawn-out row, with the BJP threatening to produce what it called "evidence" of Chidambaram's alleged misuse of finance ministry to enable his son acquire interest in Aircel. The principal opposition looks set to raise the matter in both Houses again as part of a widening face-off which can affect government's legislative agenda.

The drama on Thursday was also marked by a showdown between the BJP and Mukherjee. The veteran minister, who is basking in cross-party adulation over his prospect to be the next President, refused to respond to BJP's demand for a response from the government, saying he could not be forced to speak. The pandemonium aggravated as opposition MPs claiming the minister had used insulting language.

A subsequent perusal of records revealed nothing objectionable and Mukherjee ambled across to opposition seats and seemed engaged in normal conversation soon after the House adjourned. Later, when the House met at 4pm, he apologized for losing his cool.

Coming out strongly in Chidambaram's support, Congress argued that Swamy's documents were not verified, and the interpretation that Karti acquired shares in Aircel was unsubstantiated. Although the controversy once again saw opposition gunning for the home minister, by afternoon the storm had blown over as the House resumed normal proceedings.

Swamy, a known critic of Chidambaram, on April 26 had released documents alleging a firm Advantage Strategic Consulting, in which Karti has interests, having paid Rs 26 lakh to Aircel when the telecom firm was owned by C Sivasankaran.

Swamy alleged that as finance minister during UPA-1, Chidambaram ensured that Aircel-Maxis was not cleared until Sivasankaran had given shares to Karti.

The entire Aircel-Maxis deal is now subject to a CBI probe, with DMK leader Dayanidhi Maranhaving to quit as cabinet minister following Sivasankaran alleging he was arm-twisted into selling to Maxis.

In Lok Sabha on Thursday, BJP alleged the Rs 4,000 crore Aircel-Maxis deal was a ``big scam'' and Yashwant Sinha said: "Prima facie, what has happened is a big scam and government should not hush it up." He said Karti picked up a 5% stake in the Malaysian company.

The home minister dismissed the charges as "wild and reckless". Speaking outside the House, he said he had read out Karti's statement to which he had added a couple of lines of his own.

BJP MPs had tried to challenge Chidambaram in the House, wanting to know under which rule was the statement made. Congress MP PC Chacko, who was in the chair, said he was empowered under rule 357 to allow the statement.

Earlier in Thursday, without naming Chidambaram, who was finance minister in 2006 when the deal took place, Sinha alleged that the minister had not recused himself when the matter came up before the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) on whose recommendation he had acted.

Sinha also sought to know whether the transaction had taken place in March or October, 2006, pointing out that media reports had alleged the FIPB clearance had been put on hold.

He wondered as to how Maxis can buy 99.3% of Aircel shares when the rules permit that a foreign equity cannot exceed 74%. He said it was a matter of investigation whether the remaining equity was sold to an Indian at a throw-away price.

While Mukherjee was present in the Lok Sabha as also Congress President Sonia Gandhi, Chidambaram was not there. AIADMK members too trooped into the Well seeking to have a say in the matter.

Amid the uproar BJP members also alleged that the government had been negligent and not provided jute bags for grains.

Subsequently Mukherjee rose to make a statement but lost his temper when the opposition benches continued to disrupt the House. After his appeals went unheard, Mukherjee said he would not make a statement angering the opposition that stormed in the well of the House. "You cannot force me to reply....I am not going to speak if you get up ... " he said. Sonia was seen pacifying Mukherjee later.

Congress spokesman Manish Tewari questioned the propriety of Sinha's decision to raise the issue that he could have raised in the JPC.

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Source : The Times of India

For the first time since his arrest on February 2, 2010, the former Telecom Minister, A. Raja, on Wednesday moved a bail application in the special CBI court hearing the 2G spectrum scam case on the grounds of parity with all other accused out on bail.

In his petition, moved soon after the Supreme Court granted bail to the former Telecom Secretary, Siddhartha Behura, Mr. Raja said the case against him was “false and fabricated” and not “sustainable on law or on facts.”

Special Judge O. P. Saini issued notice to the CBI, asking it to file its reply on May 11.

Mr. Raja said: “The case… is false and fabricated and is not sustainable on law or on facts. The petitioner is innocent and likely to get acquitted. All the accused persons…, except the petitioner, have been released on bail. All the accused are facing the common charge under Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy), read with 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant), 420 (cheating), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, or, in the alternative, Sections 11 read with 12 and 13(2) read with 13(1)(d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act. The petitioner is entitled to bail on the grounds of parity.”

Mr. Raja said the trial was proceeding smoothly on a day-to-day basis; over 40 witnesses were examined; more than 1,500 pages of evidence recorded; over 100 case documents exhibited.

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Source : The Hindu

CHENNAI: The central government will not challenge the SC order cancelling 121 2G licences, Union corporate affairs minister Veerappa Moily said on Tuesday. "Now everything is over. The court has declared it. We are not going to appeal. The corporates may go in appeal. That's a different matter," Moily said.

He said while there were some "aberrations" because of some irregularities, once the UPA returned to power, the policy of first-come- first-served, evolved by the previous NDA regime, was taken up for discussion at a meeting of the empowered group of ministers (eGOM) presided over by Pranab Mukherjee. "We decided the system should be given up and we should go for open auction."

He said the setback was only temporary. "Ultimately the business vibrancy in the country is good, even more so in the telecom sector," Moily said.

On the controversial Devas-Antrix deal, Moily said the PM never wanted to hide anything and had acted swiftly to scrap the pact.

"Things are coming out...two committees came out with reports. The Prime Minister does not want to hide anything, and soon as it came to his notice, he acted on it. Somewhere, it was not handled properly," Moily said. On former Isro chief's Madhavan Nair's claim that he was being targeted, he said, "An opportunity will be given to him".

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Source : The Times of India

Questions on Aircel-Maxis deal unanswered

Serious questions of Ministerial impropriety have been raised by this newspaper in exclusive reports on the acquisition of Aircel Cellular Ltd by Maxis, a Malaysia-based telecom firm, published on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Aircel-Maxis deal of 2006 has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for some time now. The then Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran has had to resign from the Union Cabinet and his role in that acquisition deal is being scrutinised by the CBI; the last word on why and how Aircel, a company on the verge of bankruptcy in 2005, was sold for a whopping `4,000 crore to a little-known entity is yet to be heard. But the alleged deal-fixing through reportedly unsavoury means is only one part of the messy Aircel-Maxis story. The other, and no less important, part is about whether the then Finance Minister (and now Minister for Home Affairs) P Chidambaram also had a finger in the Aircel-Maxis pie which helped his son Karti earn a huge profit from the deal by first cornering a five per cent stake in Aircel and then offloading it to Maxis when it acquired 74 per cent stake in the company. Mr Chidambaram has denied any wrong-doing on his part.

He has emphatically denied that as Finance Minister he sat on FIPB approval for Maxis to acquire Aircel; that clearance was given in March and not October 2006 and, hence, the question of delaying the deal to facilitate his son’s windfall profit-making does not arise. However, neither his denial nor the UPA Government’s stout defence of Mr Chidambaram stands up to scrutiny. Records suggest that there is a divergence between what the Minister and the Government claim, and the evidence on hand. Surprisingly, unmindful of the potentially damaging consequences of continued denial premised on dubious claims, the Government has shown little wisdom in adopting a belligerent posture after the Opposition took up the issue in Parliament on Tuesday.

Even at this stage had the Government offered to look into the allegations in a free and fair manner would have helped it avoid further embarrassment. But it has chosen to brazen it out, much as it did in the early days when the 2G Spectrum scam was exposed by this newspaper. By the time the Government realised that defending the indefensible was outright foolish and damaging to its already tarred image, enormous damage had been inflicted by the Great 2G Spectrum Robbery whose stain will forever tarnish the UPA and whose shadow shall continue to stalk the Congress and the Prime Minister, no matter how hard they try to shake it off. There is no percentage in being obstinate and refusing to clarify valid doubts that have been raised — by this newspaper and parliamentarians — about the Aircel-Maxis deal.

The evidence that militates against the Government’s claim and the Minister’s denial is too overwhelming to be disregarded. The explanation, such as it is, has been too flip and simplistic to be taken seriously. As today’s front page report points out, there is clearly more to the deal than meets the eye. The Government must explain, and convincingly so, why the records do not reflect what it claims to be the factual position. Or else it should admit that there were lapses and these can’t be attributed to ‘coalition compulsion’. Nothing less will suffice.

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Source : Daily Pioneer

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Source : The Times of India