PANAJI
Former Louis Berger Vice-President Satyakam Mohanty, the prime accused in the pay-off scandal involving the New Jersey-based consultancy firm that is charged with bribing Indian officials to win two major water developmental projects in Goa and Guwahati has died recently.
On Wednesday, Mohanty's advocate Khaif Nurani informed the additional sessions court that Mohanty died in Bhuvaneshwar on May 17. The next hearing on this case will be held on June 7.
The Crime Branch of the Goa Police in September 2015 had filed a charge sheet in the Louis Berger bribery case, indicting former senior executives of the global consultancy group, then-PWD minister Churchill Alemao and some State government officials. Congress MLA and Opposition Leader Digambar Kamat is also listed as a suspect in the case.
Six persons who have named in the charge sheet are Churchill Alemao, Anand Wachasunder (director of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)-funded Goa government water and sewerage project), James McClung (former Asia head of Louis Berger) Satyakam Mahanty (former India head of Louis Berger) Richard Soni (alleged hawala operator) Arthur D’silva, (a Margao councillor and a Digambar Kamat aide).
Kamat, along with Alemao and other government officials have been accused of allegedly accepting a $976,630 bribe in 2010 from officials of the US-based consultancy firm to secure implementation rights of a multi-billion dollar JICA-funded project in Goa worth Rs 1,031 crore. The project was cleared in 2010 by Kamat.
