With the arrest of six more persons, including kingpin Chanduri Venkata Koti Sai Kumar (49) on Wednesday, Hyderabad police claim to have unravelled the sensational Telugu Akademi’s Fixed Deposits (FD) fraud.
Since December last, the accused persons swindled ₹64.50 crore of the Akademi’s 43 FDs in Karwan and Santosh Nagar branches of Union Bank of India and Canara Bank’s Chanda Nagar branch. Surprisingly, police managed to recover only a few lakhs from the accused.
The mastermind behind the fraud, Sai Kumar, a realtor from the city was previously involved in similar offences in Andhra Pradesh and Chennai. He withdrew the FDRs of AP Minority Welfare Society in 2012 and the case is being investigated by the Crime Investigation Department (CID). Sai Kumar was also accused in AP Housing Board Scam of nearly ₹6 crore and ₹25 crore FDR fraud of Northern Coal Fields in Chennai, both cases are being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The other accused include Akademi’s administrative officer and in-charge accounts officer Segoori Ramesh, Canara Bank’s Chanda Nagar branch manager M Sadhana, Nanduri Venkata Ramana from Tanuku in West Godavari district, Venkateshwar Rao, a self-proclaimed registered medical practitioner and a realtor from Sathupallu in Khammam district and Somashekar alias Raj Kumar, a realtor from Dharmavaram.
“Except the bank employees, all other accused are one way or the other are involved in real estate,” Hyderabad Commissioner of Police Anjani Kumar said.
He said that the accused persons have illegally withdrawn the Akademi’s money and cleared their debts, invested in real estate and used the money for their pleasure.
Narrating the details of the case, the Commissioner said that since Sai Kumar was already involved in similar offences in the past, he was aware of the modalities of FDR withdrawals, and his friend who was a field agent for banks in deposits and loans.
“Sai Kumar was already in debt and upon his request, his friend introduced him to an unknown person who he said will arrange FDRs for him, got him to contact with Akademi’s accounts officer Ramesh,” he said.
Whenever the Akademi plans to open an FD, Sai Kumar was contacted through the agent and in turn, the former would send Dr.Venkat or Somashekar to collect the cheque from Ramesh. Later, the prime accused with the help of his associates would create fake FDRs and fake request letters and submit them in the bank with different amounts and time periods for the FD. “They used to print and send fake FDRs to the Akademi,” he said.
According to Mr. Kumar, the needle of suspicion is going on eight and nine more people and they will be arrested soon.
Further, the Joint Commissioner of Police (Detective Department) Avinash Mohanty said that arrested managers – Shaik Mastanvali of UBI and Sadhana of Canara Bank – would inform the UTR numbers of FDRs to Venkat Raman and his associates who would use it on the fake FDRs.
“They withdrew the money after transferring it to the Akademi’s fake account in AP Merchantile Co-Operative Credit Society from Agrasen Co-Operative Urban Bank Limited.,” he said.
The police personnel have already arrested credit society’s Chairman and Managing Director B. V. V. N. Satyanarayana Rao, his sister and manager (operations) Vedula Padmavathi and relationship manager Sayyad Mohiuddin, apart from Mastanvali.
When asked about the recovery of swindled cash, the top cop maintained that the accused have spent the majority of the cash, and only a small amount was recovered.
He said that the credit society got a commission of nearly ₹6 crore for parking the Akademi’s money, and a majority of the share was taken by Sai Kumar, Ramesh and others.
