 "CBI raids and the empire of Lalu-Rabri: Easy task for agency to establish link and nail Yadavs")
If this didn’t have the ring of a scam, Lalu Prasad Yadav and Rabri Devi’s business partnership would have sounded really romantic.
A power couple — one the son of a grade 4 government employee and the other a barely literate housewife — rise above their rustic backgrounds and form an alliance that appears straight from Boris Pasternak’s classic Doctor Zhivago.
They call their enterprise LaRa (Lalu-Rabri) and gradually make half of their clan a part of the business. Sons Tejashwi and Tej Pratap become part of it. So do daughters Ragini and Chanda. And then, one fine day, LaRa’s theme turns into a chorus of alleged corruption.
Lalu and Rabri, have several companies registered in the name of the mother and her children. Rabri is a director (Director Identification Number 02984737) in three — Lara Distributers, AK Infosystems and Lara Projects. The first two are private companies and the other a limited liability partnership.
Chanda Yadav (DIN: 02006328) has four companies under her belt. Lara Distributors, AK Infosystems, Sunrise IT Infrasoft and AB Exports. Ragini Lalu (DIN: 3055721), too, is a director in all of them, except AB Exports.
The other daughter, Misa Bharati, and her husband Shailesh are also directors in a few companies.
On the face of it, this looks like a matriarchal family, where women wield most of the clout. Compared to the daughters, sons Tejashwi and Tej Pratap are partners in just one firm, Lara Projects. And this too is just a registered limited liability partnership.
So, what’s the latest CBI raid about?
At the heart of the ongoing scam is a mall coming up in Patna. This is said to be the largest in the city, with an area exceeding two acres. The Yadav family says it owns the land on which the mall is being built. His family’s LLP — Lara Projects — has entered into a partnership with Meridian Constructions for building and operating the mall.
The CBI claims the land was given to Lara Projects as part of a quid pro quo deal with Harsh and Vinay Kochar, who were allowed to run two hotels owned by the railways at throwaway prices.
According to the BJP, Harsha and Vinay transferred the Patna land to Lalu’s confidante and Rajya Sabha MP Prem Gupta, who later passed it on to the Yadav family.
The land, according to the BJP, was first transferred to a company called Delight Marketing Pvt Ltd, registered way back in 1981. Now, here is the catch. On the Registrar of Companies website, Delight Marketing, based out of Delhi, has ceased to exist. Its CIN number U74899DL1981PTC011851 does not throw up any information.
It was, instead, replaced by Lara Projects Private Limited, (CIN: U45100DL1981PTC011851), with the registration date June 10, 1981, the same as Delight Marketing.
A few days ago, while responding to BJP leader Sushil Modi’s charges that his family owns the land marked for the mall, Lalu Yadav had denied that his daughters have any stake in the project. But, this is contradicted by records.
Lalu’s wife and daughters Ragini and Chanda were both directors in Lara Projects Private Limited. This company was later turned into a Lara Projects LLP with Tejashwi and Tej Pratap as partners in February 2017. Ragini and Chanda were not part of the new partnership.
So, the land for the mall has indeed been routed through Delight Marketing and Lara Projects — a company previously owned by Lalu’s two daughters. The controlling stake, after this maze of transactions, has come to Rabri, Tejashwi and Tej Pratap.
Ironically, though Lalu owned up ownership of the land, the RoC website shows Lara Projects LLP has no assets under its ownership. Lara Projects Pvt Ltd, its predecessor, did not own up to any assets either.
This chain of transactions could be Lalu’s downfall. The CBI just needs to establish that the land initially belonged to the Kochar’s — beneficiaries of railway contracts for running two hotels — and was then routed through Delight Marketing to the Yadav family. It then needs to find out what the Yadav family paid for getting ownership of the land.
The Yadavs, perhaps in their haste to control the alleged benami property, have already left a lot of evidence and paper trail. If it goes about diligently, the CBI may be able to put the entire Yadav clan through a lot of trouble.
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