CBI files fresh assets case against former telecom min A Raja

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a fresh case against former telecommunications minister A Raja, along with 16 of his associates and relatives including his wife and brother , to probe allegations that he had amassed in their names disproportionate assets worth Rs 27.92 crore.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a fresh case against former telecommunications minister A Raja, along with 16 of his associates and relatives including his wife and brother , to probe allegations that he had amassed in their names disproportionate assets worth Rs 27.92 crore.

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As per CBI’s Chennai unit’s First information Report (FIR), the assets under its scanner were allegedly amassed during 1999 to 2010 — a period of 11 years that covered his four ministerial stints (with NDA-1 and UPA-1) at the Centre and three stints as a Lok Sabha member.

“During the period under the scanner, as a public servant his known sources of income should have been up to Rs 2 crore roughly,” said a CBI source. The agency is set to seek details from the Income Tax department and banking authorities on the accused persons’ financial profile and transactions during the period.

The period covered his stint as a telecommunications minister in May 2007-2009, during which he had allegedly orchestrated the 2G-spectrum allocation scam of 2008 according to the CBI’s case chargesheet of April 2011. The CBI had charged him along with 16 other accused persons and firms in the case.

The fresh FIR was, apparently, filed “as an off shoot of the 2G scam probe, on the basis of the report of CBI’s case probe team,” said a CBI source.

“Several of A Raja’s close relatives and associates, and firms managed by them, had allegedly an exponential financial growth under suspicious circumstances and had acquired assets worth several crore of rupees without sufficient wherewithal during 1999-2010,” CBI’s spokesperson Kanchan Prasad said.