Corruption charges against Kejriwal’s former principal secretary: Kumar’s voice in clips linked to scam: CBI

According to the CBI, these are conversations where the Delhi official and other accused in the case — Ashok Kumar, Dinesh Gupta, Sandeep Kumar and Tarun Sharma — discussed the award of contracts by allegedly bending rules to companies allegedly favoured by Kumar.

[related-post]
Watch Video: What’s making news

The purported conversations were recovered from the laptop of Kumar seized during December 2015 raids, said CBI sources. “They are basically audio packets sent by Kumar to other accused in the case. The accused avoided discussing the contracts over the phone and instead sent audio packets by mail,” said a CBI officer, adding that the agency has over a dozen such audio clips.

Friday also saw the CBI conduct searches at six locations in Delhi, Noida and Agra in connection with the case. They were conducted on the basis of information allegedly obtained from accused during questioning, CBI sources said.

The places searched included the Delhi premises of Rajendra Kumar’s chartered accountant, three premises associated with Dinesh Gupta, one premise of a company — Educity Pedagogy — owned by Ashok Kumar at Sector 63 in Noida and the premises of an Agra-based book publisher to whom the alleged bribes were diverted to.

During the searches, CBI recovered Rs 27 lakh from the premises associated with Kumar’s chartered accountant Amit Goyal, said sources.

CBI claimed that Sandeep Kumar allegedly confirmed during questioning that he had been awarded the software contract for Delhi’s VAT Department using Microsoft Dynamics platform.

However, he allegedly told investigators that he was unable to do so and supplied the software on a different platform. In the process, CBI sources claimed, more than Rs 3 crore spent on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM package through NICSI was wasted.

“This Microsoft Dynamics package lying unused in the VAT department has been recovered by a joint team of CBI and Income Tax officials,” a CBI officer said.

CBI has claimed that Kumar along with his associates Ashok Kumar, Sandeep Kumar, Dinesh Gupta and Tarun Sharma (deputy secretary in Delhi CM’s office) — all under arrest — conspired to fraudulently award contracts worth close to Rs 50 crore to Endeavour Systems and Seal Infotech and earned a bribe of over Rs 3.3 crore. It has alleged that Endeavour Systems is a front company of Rajendra Kumar.