CBI may freeze Raju's land bank

HYDERABAD: That Ramalinga Raju's desire for acquiring huge amount of land was not restricted to Hyderabad alone is well known by now. People are also aware of the fact that Raju and his men zeroed in on Chennai, Pune and Nagpur for the purpose of creating a formidable land bank. The CBI, which suspects that the land was bought with money siphoned away from Satyam, has now sent special teams to identify and freeze all these land assets.

"We are now preparing a dossier on what can be called the Satyam-Raju land bank. Most of the pieces of land in the control of Raju are in the sizes of five to six acre plot each," a source told TOI.

The CBI investigations would be more comprehensive than an earlier exercise by the Registrar of Companies (RoC) that had detailed a report on the land transactions of Raju brothers. The ROC exercise had concentrated only on the land bank of the Rajus in Hyderabad and Greater Hyderabad. It was found that the Rajus had bought land through hundreds of private companies floated by them.

Meanwhile CBI sleuths are also trying to gather evidence that the Rs 60 crore found in three foreign bank accounts in the US was diverted from the proceeds of the American depository receipts issue of Satyam in 2001.