Thursday, January 22, 2009

Satyam land grab scandal

How many people feel that Hyderabad real estate is headed for the steepest drop among IT cities ??
Prosecution opens Raju can of worms
G.S. RADHAKRISHNA

Hyderabad, Jan. 22: Government agencies today portrayed a hydra-headed Satyam scandal involving bogus employees, systematic skimming of money, countless land deals as well as a cover-up and laid the blame at former chairman Ramalinga Raju’s door.

The disclosures, made in court and outside, were rebutted by Ramalinga’s lawyer who termed them “concocted”.

Public prosecutor Ajay Kumar opened the floodgates in a metropolitan court, changing the complexion of the revelations that have so far been confined to “leaks” by unnamed sources.

“Investigations reveal that he (Raju) had created false employee accounts for over 10,000 bogus employees and siphoned off almost Rs 20 crore per month in their name,” Ajay Kumar told the court today. The prosecutor also claimed that Raju had “stashed almost Rs 7,000 crore in the accounts of his mother and brothers”.

Later, officers of the Andhra criminal investigation department (CID), which is handling the case, said the erstwhile Satyam promoters had been crediting the money each month for four years to as many as 13,000 non-existent employees.

The officers gave the break-up as 10,000 bogus employees and 3,000 retired ones. “The then Satyam management has given hikes, promotions, bonus and LTA to these invisible employees all these years,” a sleuth said. If true, the amount on this count alone adds up to Rs 960 crore.

In the evening, the CID went on record to say it had found documents suggesting 400 benami companies were used to acquire vast tracts of land.

“The documents reveal a mind-boggling land acquisition spree by the Satyam promoters across the country,” said V.S.K. Kaumudi, the inspector-general heading the CID investigation.

The payments for the land deals were made from domestic and overseas accounts of the promoters, the CID said.

The benami companies have been floated by SRSR Advisory Services, a company through which the promoters used to control Satyam, the CID said.

Ramalinga’s younger brother Suryanarayana, apparently a key figure managing the SRSR cash, has not been seen in public since Tuesday night. The police have impounded the passports and frozen the bank accounts of 18 relatives of Ramalinga.

Late tonight, the CID raided six apartments across Hyderabad allegedly used by the promoters to “dump” papers and documents. The sleuths are examining their authenticity.

Prosecutor Ajay Kumar told the court where Ramalinga was produced this afternoon that the promoters had generated false documents for around 2,000 acres in and around Hyderabad so that Maytas Properties, the family’s realty venture, could raise bank loans. Nearly Rs 3,300 crore in loans were allegedly raised using the land documents.

The prosecutor claimed that fake fixed deposit certificates worth Rs 4,000 crore had been found. Some had been mortgaged to raise loans.

Ramalinga’s lawyer, Bharat Kumar, said the CID had never asked his client anything about the alleged non-existent staff, bogus land papers and fake FD receipts.

Bharat Kumar pointed out that the public prosecutor was making verbal allegations without mentioning them in the petitions filed this morning. Government sources later said the chargesheet would mention the specific points.

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

dei,

Negative comments padichu bore adikuthu

See the results of IBM

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20090121-713690.html

Anonymous said...

I think all the people involved in scams in companies all over India should be caught. Auditors like PWC should be punished and books of all companies audited by PWC should be checked.

With corruption to its highest, there are sure many other thieves. India should come up with strict laws against corruption at this time and enforce severe punishment.

These greedy bastards screwed up the housing market badly in India.

HB

Anonymous said...

What is padichu bore adikuthu?

Anonymous said...

>> What is padichu bore adikuthu?

padichu = pad+i+chu
What a Chinese guy called chu wears on the knee joint, a pad.

bore = borewell, as in source of water supply

adikuthu = I don't have a feakin' clue.

To the guy who posted this, cmon' man, do you like us dissecting your dumbass comments like this to freakin' understand what the hell you are talking about? Use a language that comes out of the starting part of your GI tract.

Anonymous said...

padichu bore adikuthu:

Maybe it is something in Telugu.

Today I asked one of the guys at work: What is the capital of India?
And you know what he said:: "Hyderabad".

Some of these idiots from AP are so full of themselves.

Adi said...

HB,
You are way too overly optimistic and underestimate bribing potential of our businessman/leaders. I wish there would just be compulsory military tax and rest of the taxes were by our choices. We should be able to choose among road tax, politician's pay tax, fodder tax, etc etc. We need to get rid of government. Its useless machinary anyway.

Vik said...

Looks like Anon at 2:24 doesn't want to hear bad news. Neither do we, but atleast we don't want to hear fake good news. How many speculators, AP and others have deluded themselves. In Nagpur I'd visited my friend 2.5 years ago and land prices were rising very fast on the news of Satyam buying land. I'm sure those lands are owned by Raju and company. Nagpur which is 6 hours from Hyd, so supposed to be a good fit. I met some developers who were gung-ho as Nagpur as the next IT city in Maharashtra after Pune. Personally I liked the city as it was clean, with less traffic. However I felt that it lacked the critical mass of a Metro to rival Pune, Chennai or Bangalore. People like Raju with fraud money and Ponzi schemes have played pied-piper to all the rats. We all know how that story ends...

Anonymous said...

anon @ 2:57 PM
find a telugu guy... and suck his dick... u might find it tasty.
'padichu bore adikuthu" is not telugu.. its tamil.

other anon's... don't waste the space in this blog.. it is for other good usefull things..

Anonymous said...

India is heading for a crash. Real Estate, Other scams are all planned by Zionists. Top hindus are offered shelter by USA and therefore they are screwing India.What India requires is honest rule like that one when Emperor Akbar ruled India. There is no use expressing your frustrations here as 99% of Indians are yet to see a computer monitor

Anonymous said...

Real estate devaluation is global -
From New York Times:

Irish Developer Found Dead in His Home
By EAMON QUINN
Published: January 21, 2009

DUBLIN — Patrick Rocca, scion of an Irish business family and part of a generation of “Celtic Tiger Cubs” whose fortunes have waned in the economic downturn, was found dead in his home in suburban Dublin, the police said Wednesday. Police said Mr. Rocca had apparently taken his own life.
Mr. Rocca, 42, reportedly faced financial problems from his real estate investments in Britain and Ireland as their decade-long property booms ended after borrowing costs rose and demand for real estate cooled.

He was found Monday morning in his home at Castleknock, a prosperous area outside Dublin, said a police spokeswoman who declined to be identified because of department policy. She called the death “a personal tragedy” and said that it would not be investigated.

The global recession has taken other steep personal tolls in recent weeks. The patriarch of the German company HeidelbergCement recently committed suicide after speculation in volatile Volkswagen shares pushed his sprawling business empire to the edge of ruin.

The French co-founder of Access International Advisors, a fund that had lost money it had invested with the disgraced Bernard L. Madoff, also took his life. An executive at a failed mortgage lender in Maryland and a distraught stock speculator in India who suffered steep losses in the market have also ended their lives.

Mr. Rocca and others like him rode Ireland’s property boom from the mid-1990s — when the country drew the moniker Celtic Tiger — until 2006, when prices began to fall. Last week, Dublin nationalized Anglo Irish Bank, whose fortunes also tracked the declining real estate-linked Irish economy.

Mr. Rocca had a fortune estimated at £462.9 million, or $647 million, in 2007, according to The Telegraph in Britain. But by the end of 2007, the assets of his main property vehicle, Accorp Properties, were valued at 13.7 million euros, or $18 million, according to documents lodged at the Companies Registration Office, Bloomberg News reported. The company owed 18.1 million euros to creditors that was due within a year, the documents show. Rocca owned other buildings in Dublin through separate Irish-registered companies.

His sister, Michelle, a former Miss Ireland, is the partner of the Irish singer Van Morrison.

Mr. Rocca’s grandfather immigrated to Ireland from Italy in the 1920s to help rebuild the Four Courts, the 18th-century criminal courts complex in Dublin. His father, also named Patrick, founded a well-known ceramic kitchen and floor-tile retail business in Ireland, Rocca Tiles, in the mid-1970s.

The younger Rocca, who helped run the retail chain until the family sold its majority stake about nine years ago, used the proceeds to build a property business.

He purchased office buildings near London Gatwick Airport and in central London at the height of the property boom. In 2005, Mr. Rocca made his biggest purchase, a retail distribution center in Bedford, Britain, belonging to Argos, the British retail group, for 100 million euros.

Anonymous said...

Econocide on the rise

Once wealthy people are throwing themselves under trains, blowing out their brains, slitting their wrists. Others are faking their deaths by crashing their private planes and acting like they jumped off bridges. They can’t deal with being penniless or worse yet, having caused their clients’ fortunes to evaporate in this economic meltdown.
..........
...........

Anonymous said...

PE flows to realty mart may start again

Raghavendra Kamath / Mumbai January 23, 2009, 0:17 IST



Private equity (PE) funds may revive their interest in the real estate sector this year, after a lull of six to nine months, as valuations of properties have dropped by a third, making them attractive for investors, say realty funds and investment advisors to these funds.


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Most of the funds have not signed any deals in the past few months as realty prices fell sharply and economic slowdown deepened across the world, which slowed the flow of funds significantly.

“The amount of money available today is one-tenth of what it used to be. But India-specific funds, which have already raised money, will deploy more in the current quarter than they have earmarked in the last quarter,” said Subhash Bedi, partner of Red Fort Capital, a India-focussed realty fund that has invested nearly Rs 1,500 crore in the property market so far.
GOING DOWNHILL
Figures in $ mn 2007 2008
Total PE flows 15,900 11,500
Average Deal Size 55 39
PE in property 8,700 3,400


Red Fort plans to deploy Rs 150 crore in the current quarter and is in talks with a Mumbai developer. But Bedi says finance is a big issue now as most of the projects have been delayed or are yet to take off.

“The most important question that we are asking developers is that after our funding, do they have enough money to complete the project? The developer’s execution capability is the most important factor today as seven out of 10 projects will be on paper in the next four years,” Bedi said.

Ajay Piramal-promoted real estate fund Indiareit plans to deploy Rs 300 crore this year for housing projects. After investing Rs 1,400 crore between 2005 and 2007, the fund did not deploy any funds in 2008. “Valuations were very high in 2008,” said Ramesh Jogani, managing director of Indiareit Fund Advisors.

Due to weak demand, home prices and office rentals have fallen 10-30 per cent from their peak last year and analysts expect a similar fall this year as bookings are being deferred.

PE flows into real estate have fallen 61 per cent in 2008 as compared to 2007. In 2008, PE funds have invested $3.4 billion (nearly Rs 14,500 crore) in the domestic real estate as against $8.7 billion (Rs 38,500 crore) in 2007.

Despite the fall in property prices and fund inflows, analysts say the Indian property market will continue to receive funds as both domestic and offshore property funds still have nearly $6-7 billion (Rs 33,600 crore) of investible funds with them.

“Investible funds are available. It is a good time for funds with a four to five-year horizon to invest in, for those projects which are stuck mid-way due to lack of funds or companies that have excessive land bank,” said Jai Mavani, executive director of KPMG.

However, in the backdrop of current market situation, funds are still maintaining their cautious approach while investing their money. “We have enough investment period left with us and we have not taken the current market situation lightly,’’ said Naresh Nadkarni, chief investment advisor of HDFC Property Fund, which has invested Rs 2,000 crore so far in the property market.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/pe-flows-to-realty-mart-may-start-again/00/20/346836/

Anil said...

Check out the latest news - Second relief package to prop up real estate sector

And a blog entry from Pune RE lobby online partner - literally begging for comments and pass onto PBAP , a Lalit kumar & co for their next moves

http://ravikarandeekarsblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/second-relief-package-to-prop-up-real.html

Anonymous said...

Anil,
Govt is trying their best to ensure that commnon man looses whatever thay have after loosing in stock market. If this stimulus packoage comes thru then I feel builders(crooks) will rejoice.

Infrastructure status is a major benefit for the builders, they will be able to borrow at cheaper rates(I pity the banks, better offload our shares from banking sector)

I wont be surprised if lot of people will calculate and arrive at 4.5% net interest (i.e. @ 7.5%and 3L PA tax rebate.)

God knows where we are heading.

Sudershan.

Vik said...

I don't understand why any house buyer will buy from a builder today. There are too many speculators in the market. If you want to buy, go to one of them. why go with the builder ?

Anonymous said...

Vik,
The "old" flats fetch lesser value in India as compared to the "new" flats. Here old and new do not refer to the age of the flat since construction, but the ownership. A flat which is sold directly by a builder always fetches more than a flat sold by a speculator (even in same building). This has to with the mentality of the typical Indian buyer who does not want "used" things. Even though the builders flat is used mostly by the labourer gangs on the site (bathroom, etc) still, it is treated as "new" whereas a decent family (maybe staying on rent) in one of the speculator's flats immediately depreciates the value in the eyes of the buyer.
I have faced this situation when I wanted to sell my 1 year old flat. Buyers will lap up a flat in the same building from a builder at about 20-30% more! to pay for the "brand-new" status.