Louis Berger papers missing, admits Dispur

CM announces CID probe

By Our Staff Reporter

Guwahati, August 9: Hours after the State government admitted that copies of the agreement relating to the Japan Intertiol Co-Operation Agency (JICA) assisted Guwahati Water Supply Project, in which US firm Louis Berger was a consultant, are missing, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi announced a CID probe into the bribery scam.

Louis Berger employees had confessed before a US Federal court that they had paid bribes to "officials and a minister" to get the water supply projects in Goa and Guwahati.

The JICA-assisted South and Central Guwahati and North Guwahati Water Supply project is a Rs 1,973.56 crore scheme. An amount of Rs 414.08 crore has been released so far and 41 per cent of the work completed.

The Guwahati Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA) CEO had on April 18, 2011, lodged an FIR at Bhangagarh police station after a burglary at his office during which several documents, including those relating to the three water supply projects of the city, were stolen. The information was provided by PWD minister Ajanta Neog in response to a question by AGP legislator Phani Bhusan Choudhury in the assembly today.

Some of the notings of the water supply project produced by the government today bore the sigture of the then Guwahati Development Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma.

And Wachasundar, director of the JICA-funded project, and Satyakam Mohanty, the former India head of Louis Berger, have already been arrested by the Goa Crime Branch investigating the case.

A hawala dealer and former Goa PWD minister Churchill Alemao have also been arrested while the State's former CM Digambar Kamat, who has been questioned on two occasions, has been forced to secure interim bail.

The US Justice department has so far withheld the mes of the bribed Indians.