The CBI — which has booked Helmut Schuster, Ashok Jain, Vashishta Wahan Ltd. and “unknown others” for criminal breach of trust and cheating in the Rs 11-crore Volkswagen scam earlier this month — is conducting raids to gather evidence in the case.A senior CBI official said the agency yesterday raided various Delhi houses and offices of Ashok Jain, a former Volkswagen representative in India, and partners in Volkswagen’s Indian arm — Bhuwan Kumar Chaturvedi and Jagdeesh Alaga Raja. The raids continued today.The official said the CBI registered an FIR on August 3 soon after the Centre okayed its request for taking over the case. “We took all the documents relating to the case from the Andhra Pradesh government,” the official said adding, “We now have evidence of how the money was disposed of.”The CBI had seized “very important documents” during the searches, he said. The agency will probe Schuster’s role in the scam and if necessary, seek his extradition. The CBI official said Jain and Chaturvedi were available for questioning while Jagdeesh Alaga Raja, who has a bungalow in Chennai, was “not in station.”While Schuster, the German automobile major’s chief negotiator for Indian operations, was sacked by the company on June 15, Ashok Jain claimed he stepped down as the director and the promoter of Vashishta Wahan.The Andhra Pradesh government had been negotiating with the German major for setting up a manufacturing unit in Vizag. Keen to win the project for itself, it had on January 13 this year hurriedly transferred 2 million Euros (about Rs 11 crore) to Vashishta Wahan. This was after Schuster informed it that the company had agreed to set up the unit in the state.
