Special court to take cognisance of case involving Hyderabad businessman on Feb 28

A special court here will take cognisance of the supplementary charge sheet filed against Hyderabad businessman Satish Sana Babu in the bribery case involving Moin Qureshi on February 28.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday had filed a charge sheet. This is the second supplementary charge sheet in the matter filed by the ED counsel advocate Naveen Kumar Matta. Notably, Babu is the ninth accused in the matter.

The probe organisation in the charge sheet has stated that the new lead of money trail in the investigation has been found.

Special Judge Anuradha Shukla Bhardwaj, after hearing the submission of advocate Matta, has listed the matter for February 28 for cognisance on the charge sheet.

Advocate Matta stated that Qureshi through criminal activities related to scheduled offence acquires a huge amount of illegal money, which is nothing but proceeds of crime.

The lawyer further stated that Qureshi and his wife have spent it on various counts and also invested in movable and immovable properties.

The advocate also claimed that an amount of Rs 1,50,00,000 was paid in two installments in November 2012 by Babu to Qureshi which was also sought to be projected as reimbursement of expenses in some LNG deal without any evidence thereof.

Earlier, a charge sheet mentioned the name of total eight accused including some firms.

Babu is currently on regular bail given by a trial court which was later challenged in Delhi High Court. He was arrested by the ED in July last year in a case relating to the purported purchase of shares worth Rs 50 lakh of a company linked to Qureshi.

The ED had earlier stated that there was ample material collected by the investigating agency which points out that Babu is guilty of the offences under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). "The present case has the involvement of a large number of public servants as well as various private persons who were collecting money on behalf of government servants in order to get them favours in the CBI investigations," the agency said.

During the investigation of the case, it came to the fore that Babu was a close aid of Qureshi, who is accused of hawala transactions through Delhi-based operators.

In October last year, on the basis of a complaint filed by Babu, a case was registered against the then CBI director Alok Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana on charges of accepting a bribe from a businessman, who was related to the case.