Wider Jagan probe

Jaganmohan Reddy

Hyderabad, July 26: The Central Bureau of Investigation is likely to seek directives for a full-fledged probe into Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy’s assets as preliminary investigations had thrown up evidence of money laundering on a “mind-boggling” scale, sources in the agency said.

The sources said joint director V.V. Lakshminarayana, who submitted a report on the preliminary inquiry to Andhra Pradesh High Court today, was confident the court would allow a thorough probe.

The high court had earlier this month told the CBI to probe if the Kadapa MP, who broke away from the Congress to form his YSR Congress, had amassed wealth by laundering money during his late father Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy’s term as chief minister.

A CBI source said the agency had found strong evidence that a major chunk of investments several infrastructure companies in Hyderabad, Delhi, Calcutta, Chennai and Mumbai made in Jagan’s Jagati Publications Private Limited (JPPL) were not merely routine business deals.

“The documents submitted by the investors speak volumes of the modus operandi followed by Jagan’s henchmen. Over the past two weeks, the CBI questioned corporate executives of over 20 companies, some of whom were summoned from Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Chennai for long sessions. All have conceded that their investments in the JPPL were both a commercial and a political decision,” said a source.

A source, who had been studying documents submitted by 50-odd companies being scrutinised, said the data was cleverly intertwined in corporate accounting systems. “We need more time and more scrutiny by chartered accountants and corporate analysts,” the source said.

Of the 50-odd companies, 20 that had been served notices till now have all responded.

The CBI overdrive came after the successful first plenary of Jagan’s YSR Congress in the first week of this month. Over 25 Congress MLAs, two party MPs and several MLCs attended the session. “It is a clear warning to all his supporters to mend their ways or face the same consequences,” state Congress chief Botsa Satyanarayana, once a YSR loyalist, said.

CBI sources said one industrialist, who had invested more than Rs 10 crore in JPPL, had thought it was a “good investment”.

“We thought it a good business investment as the (JPPL-run) Sakshi newspaper and TV channel had been drawing maximum government ads from the state government (even before they were given accreditation by the Registrar of Newspapers of India),” the industrialist was quoted as saying.

It is a well-known fact that the Andhra government had been advertising in Sakshi newspaper and TV from the day they were launched in 2007 and 2008, both when YSR was in power.

Some industrialists even said they were told the publications were part of the Congress campaign for Rahul Gandhi’s elevation in 2014. “How could we not trust them and suspect that things would sour after YSR’s death? And that Jagan would not become chief minister even after 125 Congress legislators had signed in his favour?” said one industrialist from Delhi who has been granted two special economic zones near Hyderabad and was close to 24 Akbar Road, the party’s all-India headquarters.

CBI director Singh has asked agency officials in Hyderabad to also prepare a list of those who got land grants during YSR’s rule. “Benefits received by all companies, irrespective of their investments in Jaganmohan Reddy’s concerns, will be probed in detail,” a CBI source said.