HYDERABAD: The CBI has claimed in the Telangana high court that scores of shell companies controlled by Rajya Sabha member Y Sujana Chowdary had duped banks of Rs 5,000 crore, and that issuing a lookout circular against him was in the interests of the nation. Sujana has not yet been made an accused in the case.
The CBI’s statements came while Justice K Lakshman was hearing a petition filed by Sujana on Friday challenging the lookout circular against him. He was also seeking, as interim relief, permission to visit the United States on a business trip for the procurement of oxygen concentrators.
The judge, while giving the MP a month to complete his US trip, asked him to report to the authorities both before and after his visit there. The CBI said in an affidavit that the role of the MP was under the active consideration of investigators. “Lookout circulars are issued against economic offenders who cause immense loss to the national exchequer, to prevent them from fleeing the country,” CBI officials said in their counter.
The judge said he would examine on August 17 the contentions of the MP against the lookout circular since he had not yet been made an accused in the case. “In the meantime, let him go abroad and come back within a month from now,” the judge said.
According to the CBI counter, a Chennai-based company called Best & Crompton Engineering Projects Ltd and its directors and officials availed of a letter of credit facility from the banks under the pretext of undertaking government projects. The loans generated were directed to various shell companies that have no business at all and were never spent for the specified purposes, the CBI claimed.
Most of these shell companies were traced to the Sujana Group head office in Hyderabad from where 278 rubber seals of these shell companies were seized.
“All the shell companies were used to show circular trading and they had also shown some transactions with Best and Crompton,” the CBI claimed.
The probe agency also said that it seized several ‘incriminating’ documents from the Jubilee Hills residence of Sujana. The MP is a director in some of the companies, like Splendid Metals Company, Sujana Towers Ltd, and Sujana Universal Industries. All these companies face allegations of raising false invoices.
“These companies are using the lockdown period as an opportunity and evading investigators. We will soon confront the MP with the material we collected in respect of defrauding the banks. We have not yet made him an accused but we have collected crucial evidence,” CBI officials said.
