BJP accuses Mayawati’s brother of money laundering

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Monday alleged large-scale money laundering by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati’s younger brother Anand Kumar, whose assets have allegedly bloated over a short span of time.

However, a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) spokesperson dismissed the allegations as "reflection of anti-Dalit mindset of the BJP."

He accused BJP of "making wild allegations against the BSP, simply because it could foresee its devastating defeat at the forthcoming 2012 state assembly elections."

Addressing a press conference here, BJP general secretary Kirit Somaiya said Anand Kumar had floated as many as 26 companies over the recent past “solely for parking his ill-gotten wealth that was discreetly converted as profit of those very companies”.

Somaiya, who is also chairman of the BJP’s national scam expose committee, alleged: “Anand Kumar has parked thousand crores of scandalous money through ghost-dummy companies at Noida.”

He also released a list of 26 companies linked with dubious transactions, investments and dealings in Noida, adjoining Delhi.

“This is part of the Rs1 lakh crore NOIDA scam, in which more than 100 dummy companies are involved,” Somaiya claimed. Most of the companies were owned by Anand Kumar and his wife Vichitra Lata.

Just four companies named by the BJP general secretary were showing profits to the tune of Rs100 crore, when each of them were not more than three years old.  

Certain investments in these companies had come from Mauritius, which were allegedly a pointer to laundering of money via fictitious companies based in that island-country, he said.

One of these companies was identified as DKN Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, that was shown to have earned a profit of Rs37 crore, when the total business transacted was of the order of Rs34 crore, Somaiya pointed out.

He demanded investigation into all the “ghost” companies and action against “friends and relatives” of the chief minister.