Rags to riches courtesy Ramalinga Raju

  The 8000 crore rupee Satyam scam which shocked the entire country seems to have ‘benefitted’ some ‘poor’ gardeners and truck drivers. New evidence emerging from the investigations of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) points that many of the gardeners and truck drivers who worked for the Raju brothers were made directors of shell companies created by Mr. Ramalinga Raju to oversee his real estate investments financed by the money siphoned off from the erstwhile software giant Satyam Computers. Many of these investments were made in the village of Loyapalli in the Ibrahimpatnam mandal of Ranga Reddy district. According to the ED, the Raju brothers own as much as 4200 acres of land in this village and its market value is hundreds of times more than the price at which the brothers have acquired the lands. Back in 2006, Ch. Suryanarayana Raju, a gardener in one of orchards owned by the Raju brothers, was made the director of a fictitious company by the name SRSR holdings and a 54 acre plot in loyapalli village was registered in his name. When questioned by the ED, the gardener admitted that he was only the ‘face’ of the company and that he never paid any tax on the income generated from the land as it was not his own. According to the ED, there are many such fictitious transactions over the years and till date they have been able to associate over 312 properties purchased by the Raju brothers with the money spinned- off from Satyam.