Search the Internet          Tips  Sites: Finance, Investment

B P Verma, son, two others arrested

Onkar Singh in New Delhi

The Central Bureau of Investigation formally announced the arrest of B P Verma, former chairman of the Central Board of Excise and Customs, on Monday morning.

"B P Verma, his son Siddarth Verma, his employee Bhavana Pandey and Sharavanan, business partner of A K Enterprises, a Madras-based firm, were formally arrested by the agency on Sunday night and they would be produced in the court this afternoon," S M Khan, spokesperson of CBI told rediff.com on Monday morning.

The arrests were carried after the Central Bureau of Investigations special director P C Sharma, who is personally supervising the case, was convinced that there was enough evidence to go ahead with the arrests. This is the first time that CBI has raided the house and office of a senior government official of the rank of the secretary to the government of India and arrested him.

All the arrested have been charged under various sections of Prevention of Corruption Act and Indian Penal Code, CBI sources said.

Verma, according to the agency press release, had shown undue favours to A K Enterprises dealing in imports of certain goods and helped them to evade customs duty.

Siddarth Verma had been picking up large sums of money on behalf of his father from one middle man known as Vijay Pratap.

CBI conducted raids at fifteen places in Delhi and Madras and they continued for two days before Verma and others were taken into custody.

Verma was put under virtual house arrest by the raiding party and was not allowed to move out of his house 4-C Hudco Palace Andrews Ganj Extension.

Siddarth Verma's four companies were also raided and searches were carried out at all the places and documents seized. During the raids jewellery worth Rs 2.4 million was recovered from Verma's house.

The raiding party also got documents showing investments in UTI and LIC worth Rs 2.4 million. Rs 140,000 was found in cash and Verma's saving account showed money over Rs 760,000.

In addition to that the agency got evidence that from time to time Verma had been investing money in his son's companies. One such investment was to the tune of Rs 2 million.

Further investigations are still on and CBI would ask for police remand of Verma when he is produced before the duty magistrate for remand.

The arrest follows questioning of Verma's son by the CBI along with his business partner Rohit Jain. Besides this, the former chairman had not cooperated with CBI during the day-long raid on Saturday, agency sources said.

Even as the raids were going on Saturday at Verma's residence, the revenue department put Verma, an Indian Revenue Service official, on "compulsory wait" and appointed Sukumar Shankar, a member of CBEC, the new chairman.

The CBI sources said that the questioning of Rohit Jain will continue on Monday also.

Siddharth and Rohit were owning five companies which included Jubilee Enterprises and Jubilee Medicare.

The CBI alleged that the two were running some different business in the garb of these companies, the sources said, adding so far it was found that B P Verma had also invested Rs 2 million in these companies.

CBI had conducted raids at 15 places including Verma's office, residence, the residence of Sandeep Shrivastav, officer on special duty, the school run by Verma's wife in Delhi and the office of A K Enterprises in Madras.

CBI sources said the raids were over and the agency was now scrutinising the documents recovered during the exercise.

Verma, who had invested heavily in the stock market, was Director-General of the Economic Intelligence unit of excise and customs and was made Chairman amidst protest from a member of CBEC for alleged supersession, they said.

Apart from Verma, the CBI registered a case against Siddharth Verma, K Vijay Pratap, described as a middleman and the owner of the firm Kiran Kumar Moolchand, under the anti-corruption law.

Vijay Pratap had reportedly approached Verma for "favours" for the firm owned by Kiran Kumar Moolchand for some work in the Customs department, the sources said.

Though CBI has not yet announced any arrest in another case in which over 50 top customs officials offices and residences were raided on Saturday in a smuggling case where these officials had allegedly helped an Uzbek woman Olga in smuggling in large quantities of Chinese silk into India.

Additional inputs: PTI
'CBI has 'explosive' Verma audio tape'
CBI grills Verma's son and business associate
CBI raids on CBEC chairman, customs officials

Money

Business News

Tell us what you think of this report