Ramalinga Raju: Ahead in riches race

Hyderabad, Feb. 1: The fallen Satyam sultan could have given the last Nizam a run for his money on bragging rights, suggests an assets list drawn up by investigators.

B. Ramalinga Raju has houses — 30 of them villas — spread over 62 countries, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the revenue intelligence directorate have claimed after examining documents found by the Andhra CID.

The disclosures, if true, will put Raju ahead of Nizam Mahboob Ali Pasha, who had 27 palaces in seven countries.

The findings are part of the FIR filed last week by the two central agencies in the probe into the Rs 7,000-crore Satyam fraud and will be included in their chargesheet.

Raju would have left the seventh Nizam, who ruled for almost a quarter of a century till 1952, behind on other counts, too. The fallen IT czar donated around Rs 340 crore worth of gold to temples in Andhra over the past 10 years. Pasha is said to have given away 10 tonnes of the metal, a large quantity valued then at Rs 210 crore, to the newly born Pakistan in 1947.

At current prices (which have shot up of late), the amount attributed to Raju could buy as much as 24 tonnes of gold. But it remains to be seen if the ED can come up with documents to prove donations running into such a huge amount.

Raju appears not only to have gifted gold but also wore a lot of it: his personal jewellery, which includes rings, bracelets, chains, diamond-studded watches and other items, is worth about Rs 75 lakh, ED officials have said.

The investigators have claimed that the former Satyam chief had a Swiss telescope that costs Rs 1.12 crore. “I love star gazing,” Raju was quoted as saying during a recent CID interrogation about the telescope that was installed at his Jubilee Hills villa. The Nizam’s only telescope, made in Britain, was worth Rs 55,000.

Other disclosures covered Raju’s wardrobe: 625 pairs of suits, many of them kept in the closets of his foreign villas, 321 pairs of shoes and 310 belts, according to the investigators.

ED officials will visit the foreign villas, where Raju stayed during business trips, to verify their ownership. An ED official said the villas were located in countries such as the US, the UK, Canada, Malaysia and Mauritius.

Another claim in the FIR is that the Raju-headed Satyam received money from fictitious clients. ED investigators said this was part of an alleged money-laundering operation and possibly a way to conceal undeclared income.

“At least 75 to 110 clients are suspected to be fictitious, having made average payments of up to $5 million over the past eight years,” an ED official said, adding that a specific number of such clients was not mentioned.

The filings are in addition to those of the CID, which had handed over the papers seized during raids on the houses and offices of Raju and those of his relatives.