Raju may have diverted funds diverted from Satyam: Govt

NEW DELHI: Corporate affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta on Sunday said Satyam's disgraced chairman B Ramalinga Raju's confession of fudging balancesheets was not true and the government believed that prima facie the accused may have diverted funds from the IT major.

"Facts and figures stated in the balancesheets are not based on correct information... lot of wrong has been done," Gupta was quoted as saying by a news agency. The minister also denied that there was any need to hand over the probe to CBI.

The government's admission of possible money laundering by the promoters of Satyam could put pressure on the investigative agencies to attach properties of Maytas, the real estate and infrastructure arm of the beleaguered IT company.



Maytas's turnover had shot up from a few hundred crores to thousands of crores in a matter of a few years, having accumulated a landbank of more than 7,000 acres in and around Hyderabad. Raju's infrastructure companies, run by his sons, had successfully bid for a number of projects estimated to be worth over Rs 30,000 crore in several states, including Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Himachal Pradesh.

The pressure to include Maytas in the ambit of the ongoing probe seems to be mounting on the government from political quarters as well. In a letter written to PM Manmohan Singh, CPM general secretary Prakash Karat said a probe by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office in the Satyam Computers alone was not sufficient.

"In the light of nexus between the Satyam-Maytas group of companies, the probe should be extended to all the Maytas concerns," Karat wrote.