Hyderabad: The metropolitan sessions court has taken cognisance of the chargesheet filed by the Enforcement Directorate in the infamous Volkswagen case of 2005.
The court has issued summons to all the accused including former Volkswagen official Helmuth Schuster and six others to appear before it on April 30. The ED had earlier filed its chargesheet based on the CBI’s charges sheet in the case.
The other accused are Ashok Kumar Jain, B.K. Chaturvedi, Jagadish Alaga Raja, Gayatri Chandravadanan, Dr Joseph V. George and Vasishta Wahan Private Limited.
The case dates back to 2005 when Dr Schuster was the Indian representative of Volkswagen AG, Germany. He allegedly had conspired with other accused to create a fictitious outfit called Vasishta Wahan (its first letters, VW, are similar to Volkswagen).
The company was said to be have set up to commission a Volkswagen car manufacturing project in Visakhapatnam.
According to the charge-sheet Dr Schuster, the prime accused, had played a vital role in getting the erstwhile AP government to deposit Rs 11.67 crore in a bank account opened in the name of Vasishta Wahan. The money was allegedly siphoned off minutes after it was deposited. Rs 5 crore was transferred to the account of Joseph George of Bengaluru.
The CBI registered a case under Section 45 r/w 3,4,8,5 of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in 2005 after the scam was exposed. The chargesheet was filed in 2010, and the then minister Botsa Satyanarayana was given a clean chit amid an Opposition furore.
The investigating agency had secured a red corner notice through Interpol for apprehending Dr Schuster. But, owing to the lack of mutual legal assistance or extradition treaties with Germany, the CBI could not interrogate him.
