NALCO postpones board meeting after chairman’s arrest

BHUBANESWAR - The state-run National Aluminium Company Ltd (NALCO) postponed its board meeting slated for Saturday after the arrest of its chairman-cum-managing director A.K. Srivastava in New Delhi on graft charges, a company official here said.

There was a board meeting scheduled today (Saturday) and that has been postponed because the chairman is not there, and officially there has been no order from the appointing authority, NALCO finance director B.L. Bagra told IANS.

Our Delhi office confirmed about the arrest late Friday. Since the appointment of the chairman is by the government, the procedure lies with the government now, he said.

“We are waiting for the governments instructions,” he said, adding: The development is such a serious one we hope something will happen today and the government will take a view on the matter.

NALCO chairman-cum-managing director (CMD) A.K. Srivastava and his wife were arrested by the CBI for allegedly accepting bribe Friday.

They were to be presented before a special court in New Delhi Saturday.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Srivastava, his wife Chandni Srivastava, along with two accomplices, Bhushan Lal Bajaj and Anita Bajaj.

The CBI arrested Srivastava when his wife was accepting an illegal gratification of three gold bricks, each weighing one kg, of 24 carat gold. His wife was accepting the bribe from the wife of a middleman who was brokering a deal between the CMD and a Madhya Pradesh-based private company, the CBI said in statement Friday night.

At the time of the CBI raid, Srivastava’s wife, accompanied by the wife of the middleman, had just deposited the three gold bricks in a bank locker of the Bank of Maharashtra in the national capital.

The bank locker was in the name of the wife of the middleman. It was being operated by Srivastava’s wife “as benami”.

A search of the locker revealed seven more gold bricks of 1 kg each, golden ornaments weighing 188 grams and Indian currency of Rs.9.5 lakh. A search of Srivastava’s wife led to the recovery of Rs.5 lakh from her handbag and the key of another locker in the name of the wife of the middleman.