(Courtesy: Times of India Dated 6 Nov 2011 )
HYDERABAD: Disgraced
Satyam founder Ramalinga Raju may not be your dapper Danny Ocean, the fictional character of Ocean's Eleven. But just like the lead protagonist of the famous Hollywood flick got away scot-free after a spectacular heist, Raju finally walked out of Hyderabad's Chanchalguda jail on Saturday to enjoy freedom after pulling off the largest corporate fraud in Indian history estimated to run into well over Rs 14,000 crore.
Today, the Satyam scam mastermind and all his nine alleged co-conspirators are out on bail, thanks to bumbling investigating agencies that failed to bring charges against them in the stipulated time frame. The Supreme Court had set a deadline of July 31, 2011, for completing the trial in the Satyam scam.
On Friday, Raju along with brother and former Satyam managing director B Rama Raju as well as former Satyam chief financial officer Vadlamani Srinivas were granted bail by Supreme Court, with the other seven accused were already out on bail granted on earlier occasions.
It was finally not his ill-health, the grounds on which Raju had even managed to spend time in the comforts of a VIP room at the Nizam's Institute of Medical Science (Nims) during his nearly three-year incarceration, but the wrangling between two investigating agencies - the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (EC) - that led to the case dragging on and perhaps worked to the advantage of Raju and his aides.
Both CBI and the ED are embroiled in a tussle over the jurisdiction of the trial court. The two warring agencies had even approached the prime minister as well as Union finance and law ministers and had even obtained legal opinions of the attorney general of India and solicitor general of India in the matter to out-trump the other.
CBI, which has filed three chargesheets so far and had stated its intent to file a fourth chargesheet on the diversion of funds to foreign accounts, has so far been successful in blocking ED from going ahead in the case as it feared that its own trial in the case would get affected.
ED, on the other hand, has not been able to file even a single chargesheet in the last 32 months though it has attached hundreds of crores of rupees worth of assets of Raju and his family and also made the Raju family, former Satyam directors and independent directors as accused in its case under the Prevention of
Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
But under the PMLA, ED has to file its chargesheet in a sessions judge court and only after this, the ongoing trial automatically get shifted to the ED court by virtue of the provisions enshrined in the PMLA. Had ED been successful in filing its chargesheet in the matter, Raju and his men may perhaps not have been out so soon.
Incidentally, ED had expressed its readiness to file its chargesheet in the same trial court in Hyderabad where the CBI case is going on if the apex court designated the trial court as the competent court for the
ED case also. Accordingly, ED has already filed a petition in the SC seeking a legal clarity in the matter.
Though CBI has been opposing the bail pleas of Raju and other key accused on the grounds that once out of jail they would influence witnesses in the case, the same arguments did not cut much ice with the apex court this time around.
However, while granting bail to Raju and two others on Friday SC has given CBI a choice to move the apex court for cancellation of bail if the accused abused the bail conditions or attempted to directly or indirectly influence the witnesses in the trial.
It may be recalled that SC had on October 26 last year cancelled the bail granted by the Andhra Pradesh high court to Raju and other accused on the same CBI objections after which they were forced to re-surrender.
At that time, SC had ruled that the accused could file another bail application after July 31, 2011, if the trial in the case was not completed in the local court, a chance that Raju and his aides grabbed with open hands this time around.
On its part, CBI has also been accusing Raju's lawyers of using delaying tactics by taking weeks to cross-examine each investigating officer, something that should have been done in a matter of days. According to CBI sources, out of the 11 investigating officers, only five have been cross-examined by the defence lawyers of far.
But the fact also remains that the investigating agencies have failed to make much headway into the case, especially when it comes to the more serious charges of siphoning off of funds from Satyam to foreign bank accounts.
So did Raju, who strangely enough was the reason why the scam came to light after he confessed in January 2009 to fudging Satyam's books, indeed have the last laugh?
