Thaindian News

New Delhi, Feb 25 (IANS) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Friday arrested the chairman-cum-managing director of the National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) A.K. Srivastava and his wife for allegedly accepting bribe. “The CBI arrested Srivastava and his wife Chandni Srivastava along with two accomplices, Bhushan Lal Bajaj and Anita Bajaj,” said a senior CBI official here.

The CBI arrested Srivastava when his wife was accepting an illegal gratification of three gold bricks, each weighing one kg, of 24 carat gold. His wife was accepting the bribe from the wife of a middleman who was brokering a deal between the CMD and a Madhya Pradesh-based private company, the CBI said in a late night statement.

At the time of the CBI raid, Srivastava’s wife, accompanied by the wife of the middleman, had just deposited the three gold bricks in a bank locker of the Bank of Maharashtra in the national capital.

The bank locker was in the name of the wife of the middleman. It was being operated by Srivastava’s wife “as benami”.

A search of the locker revealed seven more gold bricks of 1 kg each, golden ornaments weighing 188 grams and Indian currency of Rs.9.5 lakh. A search of Srivastava’s wife led to the recovery of Rs.5 lakh from her handbag and the key of another locker in the name of the wife of the middleman.

A search of the second locker led to recovery of Rs.15 lakh in cash.

The total recoveries amount to 10.188 kg gold and Rs.29.5 lakh in cash. The total value of the seizures works out to approximately Rs.2.43 crore at current prices of gold, the statement said.

The four have been arrested.

Further searches in various parts of the country are continuing.

A senior NALCO official confirmed in Bhubaneswar that a CBI team also visited the NALCO corporate office in the Orissa capital, but did not ask for any documents.