BJP accuses Mayawati's brother of money-laundering

In what was described as a sensational expose, Bhartiya Janata Party general secretary Kirit Somaiya on Monday alleged large scale money laundering by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati's younger brother Anand Kumar, whose assets have allegedly bloated over a short span of time.

Among those who were alleged to have been hand-in-glove   with him was Noida's powerful chief engineer Yadav Singh.

Addressing a press conference in Lucknow, Somaiya sought to point out how Anand Kumar had floated as many as 26 companies over the recent past "solely for parking his ill gotten wealth that was discreetly converted as profit of those very companies."

Somaiya, who is also the chairman of BJP's national scam expose committee, alleged, "Mayawati's brother Anand Kumar has parked thousand crores of scandalous money through ghost-dummy companies at Noida."

He also released a list of 26 companies linked with dubious transactions, investments and dealings at Noida.

"This is part of the Rs 1 lakh crore Noida scam in which more  than 100 dummy companies are involved", he claimed.

Most of the companies were owned by Anand Kumar and his wife Vichitra Lata. The brother and his family lives in Mayawati's official bungalow in New Delhi and was known to be enjoying tremendous clout in the UP government, particularly in the lucrative government organisations like Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad Development Authority and Meerut Development Authority , which were better known as "UP's goldmines".

The magnitude of the transactions is reflected in the fact that just four companies named by the BJP general secretary were showing profits to the tune of Rs 100 crores when each of them were not more than three years old .

Significantly, none of the companies had carried out very big business, yet the depicted profits were huge and far beyond proportion to the business each had transacted.

What was even more interesting that certain investments in these companies had come from Mauritius which were allegedly a pointer to laundering of money via fictitious companies based on that island.

Somaiya identified one of these companies as "DKN Infrastructure Pvt Ltd that was shown to have earned a profit of Rs 37 crores when the total business transacted was of the order of Rs 34 crores."

Another companys was identified as Adept Realcom Pvt Ltd., showing profit of Rs. 15 cores. There was no description of the type of business it had transacted over the two years of its existence.

The case of the third company -- Naveen Infradevelopers and engineers pvt ltd -- was even more intriguing . While the total transaction of the three-year old company did not exceed Rs 30,000, it received an usecured loan of Rs 67 crores and also gave away advances to the tune of Rs 62 crores.

Surprisingly, the fourth company named by Somaiya had transacted business worth only about Rs 8,000.

Somaiya demanded investigation into all the "ghost" companies, and a special investigation team to probe the "friends and relatives" of the UP chief minister.

Reacting sharply to the move, a ruling Bahujan Samaj Party spokesman who did not wished to be named, termed the allegations as "reflection of anti-dalit mindset of the BJP."

Far from coming out with any concrete defence, the spokesman made a counter attack on the BJP, accusing the party of being "neck-deep in corrupt activities wherever the party was in power."

He went on to accuse BJP of "making wild allegations against the BSP, simply because it could foresee its devastating defeat at the forthcoming 2012 UP assembly elections."