Bribe stained NALCO chief A K Srivastava and wife to be produced in court

Chairman and Managing Director of National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) A K Srivastava, who has been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly accepting bribes, would be produced before a court on Saturday.

The CBI has also arrested Chandni Srivastava, wife of the state run company’s Chairman, and two accomplices on Friday.

The arrests were made after CBI sleuths had a specific message that Srivastava was expecting a favour against an undisclosed deal.

The NALCO boss had set his wife to take on his behalf three gold bricks, each weighing one kg.

His wife had accepted those “gifts” from the wife of a broker, who masterminded the deal between the CMD and Madhya Pradesh-based private group of companies.

The CBI caught them red handed when, the CMD’s wife had just deposited the three gold bricks in a bank locker in Bank of Maharashtra, New Delhi. The locker, which is in the name of wife of the middleman, was being operated by Chandni, the CBI noted in the investigation.

The CBI also raided Srivastava?s offices in Delhi and Bhubaneswar and reportedly seized about 10 kgs of gold, valued at Rs 2 crore and Rs 30 lakh in cash.

Srivastava was to chair a meeting of the NALCO Board of Directors on Saturday.

The CBI raids came after the NALCO?s finance director on Wednesday said the public-sector undertaking will fall about 1,00,000 tons short of its production target of 1.68 million tons of alumina in the 2010-11 fiscal year, due to delays in refinery expansion.

The export of both alumina and aluminum is also expected to take a hit due to increasing domestic demand, he had said.