Money-laundering: ED arrests Hyderabad bizman

Srinivas Raju Mantena and his associate Aditya Tripathi were accused in the eTender scam in Madhya Pradesh

Hyderabad: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has arrested Srinivas Raju Mantena, founder and chairman of Mantena Constructions, and his associate Aditya Tripathi of Arni Infra and resident of Bhopal under Prevention of Money Laundering Act-2002 (PMLA).

They were accused in the money-laundering investigation into the eTender scam in Madhya Pradesh where a large number of infrastructure companies, mostly based in Hyderabad, had conspired with a few senior government officials and IT service providers of Madhya Pradesh State Electronics Development Corporation Limited (MPSEDC) to tamper with the eTenders and to illegally obtain large value contracts.

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The ED initiated an investigation based on an FIR dated April 2019 wherein Max Mantena Micro JV Hyderabad, GVPR Engineers Limited Hyderabad etc are named as the main beneficiaries of this scam. As per the FIR, the MP e-Procurement portal was managed by MPSEDC, Antares Systems Limited, Bangalore and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), according to a press release.

They were given a contract for five years for the maintenance and operation of the portal. The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Bhopal, has already filed a preliminary charge-sheet and it has been established from the IP access logs that Osmo IT Solutions Private Limited of Vinay Choudhary and Varun Chathurvedi had misused the login credentials provided by Antares and had illegally accessed and tampered with the e-tenders and changed the bid values of certain companies to make them L1, the release said.

In return, they had taken illegal gratification from the bidding companies. Max Mantena JV Hyderabad had illegally won tender number 10030 worth Rs. 1,030 crore in this manner. There are large number of other tenders which are also under scrutiny and are suspected to have been won by using the same modus operandi.

During the investigation, search operations were conducted in Hyderabad, Bhopal and Bangalore at more than 20 locations at the residence and office premises connected with Mantena Constructions, Max Infra, GVPR Engineers, Arni Infra, Osmo IT Solutions, and Antares and a large number of incriminating documents and digital devices were seized for examination.

Statements of various stakeholders have been recorded under PMLA. Mantena group has seen a big spurt in successful bids in the last few years either directly or in association with other Hyderabad-based companies. Investigations conducted so far revealed that Srinivas Raju played a crucial role in the entire scam.

With the assistance of his friend Aditya Tripathi, he set up a front entity Arni Infra in Bhopal and used it to route funds for hawala activities. Both Srinivas Raju Mantena and Aditya Tripathy admitted that Mantena Constructions have given sub-contracts of earthworks worth around Rs. 93 crore to Aditya Tripathi.

The investigation further revealed that Arni Infra is a front entity which has been cleverly created by Aditya Tripathy at the instance of Srinivas Raju Mantena to book fictitious work orders, generate cash and to pay bribes for tampering with the eTenders and also for bribing senior Government functionaries.

Fund trail investigation has also yielded direct unexplained financial transactions between Mantena Constructions and Arni Infra with the accused directors of Osmo IT Solutions who were already in the custody of EOW, the release added.

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