The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has stepped into the YSRCP-era scam. And searches have also been carried out in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Delhi, besides two Telugu states. ED officials are simultaneously conducting inspections in 20 areas in 5 states.
During the YSRCP regime, liquor shops were opened under the auspices of the government and all the famous brands were left aside and J brands were allowed to operate. Some distilleries were taken over and liquor was produced under various names. Large orders were placed only with companies that gave commissions.
The liquor gang used to collect their bribes after paying the bills to the liquor supplier from the Beverages Corporation. The SIT formed by the coalition government has already concluded that this entire process was a complete conspiracy. The SIT has concluded that during the YSRCP regime, approximately Rs. 3,500 crore was looted in the name of liquor.
The chargesheet states that this amount was diverted through shell companies and benami companies. The SIT has collected some key evidence that some people did real estate business with the money from liquor bribes, while others invested abroad. Now, the ED has stepped in on the suspicion that liquor bribes were transferred abroad through hawala. The YSRCP liquor gang, which is in trouble with the SIT investigation, is struggling with the clutches of the ED.
On the other hand, the SIT has so far named 29 individuals and 19 companies as accused in this liquor scam case. It has arrested 12 people. The SIT recently found that ‘Big Boss’ had transferred some of the thousands of crores of rupees looted through liquor bribes to Zambia in Africa.
The investigation revealed that he had invested about Rs. 400 crores in metal, mining, food processing and other sectors there. It is believed that all this was transferred through shell companies and hawala channels. The SIT, which concluded that bribes of Rs. 150 to 600 were collected for each liquor case and looted Rs. 3.5 thousand crores, identified ‘Big Boss’ as the ultimate beneficiary.
But where did all that money go? How was it moved? The SIT is conducting a thorough investigation into where it was invested. In this process, it identified the involvement of hawala traders in Mumbai, Delhi, Hyderabad and other cities and called them for questioning. When representatives of several shell companies were questioned, the Bigg Boss investment network in Zambia was uncovered.
The SIT found that dozens of shell companies and benami were set up in various countries to route this amount from India to Zambia. Some of the liquor bribe money was used to buy real estate in several places including Bangalore and Hyderabad, and some of it was already found to have been spent on behalf of YSRCP candidates in the last general elections.