ED officials raid business premises of TRS MP

Hyderabad; June 11: (H.S) Different  teams  of Enforcement Directorate on Friday conducted searches at offices of Madhucon Group belonging to TRS MP and its Lok Sabha floor leader Nama Nageswara Rao in connection with ₹1,064 crore bank fraud. Madhucon group of companies are owned by present Member of Parliament from Khamamam. Madhucon group undertakes construction of highways and road projects and they also own a sugar factory situated in Khammam district

The ED began searches at 7 am at residence of Khammam MP Nageswara Rao, Madhucon Infra office in Jubilee Hills, the residence of CMD of Ranchi Express Way K Srinivasa Rao, and other directors N Prithvi Teja and N Seetaiah.

The present raid follows a CBI  chargesheet that was  first registered FIR in 2019 and filed chargesheet against Ranchi Express Way Limited and its directors in 2020. CBI in its chargesheet has alleged that  the promoters of the Ranchi Expressway Ltd, including its CMD K Srinivasa Rao, caused a loss of over ₹1,000 crore to a consortium of banks led by Canara Bank. It is also said that there was no progress in the project work and the directors indulged in fraud to get a loan of ₹1,029 crore. In 2018, the loan became a non-performing asset.

The directors allegedly indulged in fraudulent acts to get a total loan amount of ₹1,029.39 crore released by the consortium of banks and allegedly diverted to perform other activities.

On January 31, 2019, the National Highways Authority of India terminated its contract with the company and forfeited ₹73.95 crore by way of encashment of the performance bank guarantee with Canara Bank.

Many PIL s were filed in Jharkahand high court over non-completion of projects undertaken by Madhucon and Ranchi Expressway and court directed directed CBI to investigate and file compliance report,

At the time of filing this report the search operations are still on and many important documents linked to this road project are being confiscated by Enforcement Directorate