Interim CBI chief Nageshwar Rao defends wife’s financial deals, denies irregularities

Interim CBI Chief M Nageswara Rao on Tuesday denied any irregularities in the investments made by his wife in a private company.

In a signed statement, Rao, a 1986-batch IPS officer from Odisha, said all the transactions and investments made by him or his wife, Mannem Sandhya, have been given to the competent authorities, and everything has been mentioned in his annual property return filed mandatorily with the government.

M Sandhya, borrowed ₹25 lakh from AMPL in the financial year ending March 2011, according to the records maintained by the Registrar of Companies.

According to details released in a Tamil-language portal Savukku, Sandhya was accused of money laundering through a shell company in Kolkata in which she was an investor. The report alleged that Rao had acquired a benami property through illegal routing of funds, and claimed that Rao could have legitimised his unaccounted money by first investing and then accepting a loan from the same firm, and in the process getting his wife involved as the front person.

Records showed that between the financial years ending 2012 and 2014, Sandhya had given loans amounting to Rs 1.14 crore to AMPL in three tranches — ₹35.56 lakh in FY’12, ₹8.27 lakh in FY’13 and ₹40.29 lakh in FY’14.

Denying all reports and giving a chronological order of events, Rao said his wife had taken a loan of ₹25 lakh from Angela Mercantile Pvt Ltd, a company which belonged to "our longtime friend Praveen Agarwal for purchase of an immoveable property in Guntur, Andhra Pradesh".

Rao's innings as interim CBI chief came to an abrupt halt after the Supreme Court had Friday last refrained him from taking an policy decision and submit in a sealed envelope about the administrative decision undertaken by him.

He was made interim chief last week after the government intervened and sent CBI Director Alok Verma and his second-in-command Rakesh Asthana on leave toll corruption cases against them were probed.

Giving details, Rao said the property was purchased by her with her cousin Dr RK Rana Babu on September 18, 2010.

He said a year later, his wife sold some acres of land from her inherited agricultural property for an amount of ₹30.72 lakh and two months later sold more land for an amount of ₹27.90 lakh.

"Thus she received a total amount of ₹58.62 lakh as sale proceeds during 2011. This along with ₹1.38 lakh from personal savings and a total of ₹60 lakh was sent to Angela Mercantiles Private limited in 2011, who after deducting the loan amount retained the balance of ₹35 lakh as investment," he said.

Rao added that in July 2014, a little less than three years of the investment, the Kolkata-based company returned to her a total of ₹41.33 lakh which included an interest of ₹6.33 lakh.

But this is not the only charge against him. He has also been accused of burying a multi-crore scam probe involving top officials of the State Bank of India, PSU Hindustan Teleprinters Ltd, VGN Developers Private Ltd and Tamil Nadu government in a controversial land deal.

with PTI inputs.