COIMBATORE: CBI sleuths on Thursday raided the premises of an IT company in the city over alleged irregularities in the contracts awarded to it by the state-owned Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML).It may be noted that BEML chairman and managing director V R S Natarajan was recently interrogated by the CBI in connection with the procurement of below-par Tatra trucks for the Army. The Bangalore-based BEML was involved in the assembling the trucks, after the parts were procured from Czech truck manufacturer, Tatra. These trucks were later sold to the Army.The premises of Coimbatore-based Astral Consulting Limited and the residence of the company’s director, C S Srivatsan, were raided, the CBI said in a release issued on Thursday.The agency also conducted simultaneous raids at the office and residences of Natarajan in Bangalore. Thursday’s raids were meant to probe the various contracts awarded to Astral Consulting for implementation of the Enterprises Resource Planning Project of the BMEL.The CBI also registered a case against Natarajan and Srivatsan under the Prevention of Corruption Act. “It is alleged that the accused persons were parties to a criminal conspiracy entered amongst themselves at Bangalore and other places during 2004-09 to cheat M/s BEML in the matter of award of different works relating to the implementation of Enterprises Resource Planning Project in M/s BEML, causing wrongful loss to M/s BEML and wrongful gain to others,” the CBI said. It has its registered head office on North Huzur Road and a branch at Krishnaswamy Nagar, Ramanathapuram. Since the contracts were awarded to the company at highly inflated rates by BEML, the PSU suffered a wrongful loss of `40.67 crore.
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