CBI focuses on Raju's overseas bank accounts

The CBI, probing the Satyam multi-crore financial scam, is likely to approach the US, Mauritius and some European countries to seek details of bank accounts of the firm's tainted founder Ramalinga Raju, and his kin, in those nations.

While the agency was preparing documents for sending a letters rogatory to the US, CBI sources said a similar exercise would be undertaken for countries like Mauritius and a few tax havens in Europe. A letters rogatory is a request for judicial assistance.

Sources said the money was routed back to India through some banks in the United Kingdom and the remittances to these banks were made from these tax havens. Raju had likely converted money in several salary accounts into fixed deposits in four banks and transferred these to banks in Mauritius.

This money was ultimately routed through Lakeside Investments and Lakeview Investment companies to front companies, including Maytas Infra and Maytas Properties.

CBI sources said the process of sending the letters rogatory to the US Justice Department, seeking details of Raju's accounts in Bank of Baroda's New York branch, besides seeking the American authorities' help to obtain the details of Raju and his kin's accounts, believed to be in Bank of America, is on.

The details of the accounts, after being procured, would be submitted before the Hyderabad court later, sources said.

The CBI, which has set up a multi-disciplinary investigation team, including officials from the Income Tax Department, Enforcement Directorate, and RBI, has claimed the money involved in the scam is nearly Rs 10,000 crore, more than what was stated by Raju in his confessional note in January this year.

In a related development, the CBI, while examining the officials of Sebi, found that there was no nexus with the regulators in inflating Satyam Computer's revenues.

A CBI team probed the share transactions of the Satyam group of companies on the National Stock Exchange and the Bombay Stock Exchange after it was found that Raju and his accomplices were allegedly involved in generating fake invoices and showing profit which was never there.