New Delhi, Jan. 19: The Serious Frauds Investigation Office will also probe Maytas Properties and Maytas Infra, whose proposed merger with Satyam led to the fall of the IT firm’s promoter, B. Ramalinga Raju.

According to corporate affairs minister Prem Chand Gupta, the inspectors have stumbled on an apparent nexus between the events that have taken place in Satyam and Maytas Properties Ltd and Maytas Infra Ltd.

The Maytas twins are promoted by the Raju family members.

Investigators suspect that money was siphoned out of Satyam and pumped into the infrastructure and realty firms partly through advances.

The apparent nexus makes it necessary to obtain information, records and books from the two companies, Gupta said.

The “links” surfaced during the frauds office’s preliminary inspection of the accounts of the eight related companies of Satyam.

The eight are Maytas Properties, Maytas Infra, Satyam BPO, Nipuna Services, Knowledge Dynamics, Nitor Global Solutions, CA Satyam AS and Satyam Venture Engineering Services. They are also being scanned by the Andhra Pradesh CID and the Registrar of Companies.

In an interim report, the Registrar of Companies said Satyam had fudged as much as Rs 6,000 crore. It suspects that Satyam’s promoters have made advances and otherwise siphoned off money into their personally held companies.

Besides, capital receipts have been used for revenue payments, while there was considerable insider trading in Satyam by the promoters and senior officers.

The probe covers provisions of the Companies Act, 1956, dealing with issues such as the payment of dividend, disclosure of interest in contracts and inter-corporate loans.

The probe also looked into contributions, if any, made by Satyam to charitable institutions, political parties and other entities.

The initial findings are subject to a detailed probe by the serious frauds office.

Investigators in the serious frauds office team have three months to file their report.

On January 7, Raju admitted to a Rs 7,000-crore fraud in Satyam, confessing that he had been cooking the books for years. The botched Maytas acquisition was an attempt to fill fictitious assets with real ones.