Booked firms cut deal with Munda

In the raids conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation [CBI] on the companies that were allotted coal blocks, the Abhijeet group has turned out to be the main beneficiary of the coal loot. Three companies of the group have figured in the list which were booked on Tuesday morning. They are JAS Infrastructure Capital Private Limited, AMR Iron and Steel Private Limited and JLD Yavatmal Energy Limited.

 

Curiously, the Abhijeet group's harvesting of the coal blocks started when the Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP] government, headed by Arjun Munda, was in power in Jharkhand. Manoj Jayaswal, 53, whose name has surfaced in the three FIRs, is the chairman of the Abhijeet Group and was promoting the three companies.

 

The CBI registered five separate cases in the scam on Tuesday after months of inquiry against five companies and 15 persons. Raids at at least 35 places were conducted in the day in 11 cities, including Nagpur, Kolkata, Bhilai, Yavatmal, Raipur, Dhanbad, Ranchi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi [NCR], among others.

 

Besides three firms of the Abhijeet group, two other firms – Navbharat Power Private Limited and Vini Iron & Steel Udyog Limited – were also booked. Enquiries made by Millennium Post have revealed that Munda's name also figured in the promotion of Vini Iron & Steel Limited, though its directors now claim that the composition of the board of directors of the company changed  at a later date when Munda's arch rival Madhu Koda's close associates Vijay Joshi and Vinod Sinha took charge of the company from the earier owner Tulsyans.

Koda had succeeded Munda as the chief minister of Jharkhand in September 2006. The MoU between the Jharkhand government and Vinni Iron & Steel Ltd was signed on 14 September 2006, four days before Koda took over and five days after Munda had resigned. 'It is obvious that the papers for MoU with Vinni was processed during Munda's time,' said a Jharkhand government official.

However, according to the CBI officials, the names of Sinha and Joshi do not figure on the board of directors, which continues to have more or less the same composition which it had at the time of signing of the MoU. The CBI has booked the original directors, and not Sinha and Joshi, in the matter, who are otherwise in jail in another matter.    

The CBI sources have said that the Congress member of Parliament, Vijay Darda is the director of one of the five firms against whom the case has been lodged. The company's name is JLD Yavatmal Energy Limited from Nagpur. This company too is part of the Abhijeet group. Darda's brothers are also directors in other companies of the Abhijeet group. Darda has been named in the FIR.  

The names of steel and power major Essar also figures as the CBI has alleged that one of the brothers who owned Navbharat Power had sold 5,000 personal shares for Rs 50 crore and company shares, which relatively were worth Rs 85 crore, for just Rs 12 crore reportedly to Essar Power Limited, and now the Prasad brothers do not have the controlling shares in the company. The brothers have been identified as P Trivikrama Prasad, Y Harish Chandra Prasad.

The CBI said that the three companies of the Abhijeet group forged their details in the application they submitted before the allocation. 'In the performa, which was filled at the time of the application, Question 29 and Question 30 asked, “Have you been allocated a coal block earlier?” To this they wrongly said “no”, as all three have been allocated blocks earlier. Besides, the mining in those earlier allotted coal blocks had not started. They fabricated their details and have been booked for the same,' a CBI official said. 

Interestingly, Vini Iron and Steel Udyog Limited applied for coal blocks on false claims that they had a tie-up with 15 companies, which when the CBI probed, turned out to be fake claim, as nine companies said that they had nothing to do with it. The CBI officials said that all companies made false claims to show their increased financial capacity.

 

The filing of FIRs comes three months after the registration of a Preliminary Enquiry into the coal scam by the agency on the directions of the Central Vigilance Commission. During the preliminary enquiry, the CBI was informed by the coal ministry officials that it had issued show-cause notices to some of the firms which were allocated the mines for explaining the delay in conducting the mining work.