HYDERABAD: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday arrested four accused — including former managing director of Siemens Industry Software (India) Private Limited Soumyadri Shekhar Bose — in the multi-crore Andhra Pradesh State Skill Development Corporation (APSSDC) scam.
The ED arrested them and produced them in Vishakapatnam Special PMLA court, which remanded them to judicial custody.
ED has sought the custody of all four accused for questioning the involvement of bureaucrats and politicians.
Three other accused arrested on money laundering charges were identified as Vikas Vinayak Khanvelkar, managing director of DesignTech Systems Limited (Pune), Mukul Chandra Agarwal, chief operating Officer of PVSP IT Skills Projects Pvt Ltd and Skillar Enterprises Private Limited (Chattarpur), and Suresh Goyal, chartered accountant of SSRA & Associates.
ED took up the case based on CID FIR.
The allegation is that in 2015, officials of Siemens Industry Software India and DesignTech Systems conspired with the political executive and officials of the government of Andhra Pradesh to misappropriate funds from the state exchequer.
They colluded with the government officials such as G Subba Rao, secretary and CEO of AP State Skill Development Corporation, and Dr K Lakshminarayana, director, APSSDC, and projected that the skill development project worth Rs 3,300 crore would be executed with only Rs 330 crore as contribution from the government of AP.
Ninety per cent of the cost of the project would be “in-kind-grant” by the technology partners.
APCID alleged, “With a malafide intention, the agreement was drafted without any mention of the estimated cost of the project or the 90% in-kind grant to be given by Siemens and DesignTech. Ghanta Subba Raoand Dr K Lakshminarayana drafted the agreement in the form of a work order of Rs 370 crore being given by the APSSDC to Siemens and Design Tech. When the fraud got exposed in 2017-2018, the note files were destroyed illegally,” alleged CID.
The then government of AP officials released Rs 370 crore against the guiding principles of AP civil works code and financial code of AP as advance to the Design Tech without even initiating the project.
An amount of Rs 241 crore was diverted to a newly established company PVSP/Skillar Enterprises under the guise of project management as planned by Suman Bose and Vikas Khanvelkar with the active role of one Mukul Chandra Agarwal.
This was identified in 2017-2018 by the central agencies such as directorate general (GST Intelligence) and income tax department when they detected a modus operandi of bogus invoices, without delivery of any goods or services.
