CHENNAI: A software company promoter from Jharkhand, settled in Chennai, has lodged a complaint with the commissioner of police alleging that some persons claiming to be close with former chief minister M Karunanidhi “cheated him to such an extent that he lost his flourishing business in Chennai worth more than Rs 8 crore”.In his complaint, Sanjeev Kumar Dwivedi said he had made Chennai his home for the last 15 years. Promoter of Ubiqui Softwares, a company located in Villivakkam (SIDCO), he was approached by Chetan Pathak, VP of Ramco Systems, and Samson Manuel, COO, TVS Net Technologies, for a business deal with Ice Telecom Pvt Ltd in June-July 2009. The duo took him to meet Shyam, CEO of Ice Telecom, on Ranjith Road in Kotturpuram. “That building, they informed me, belonged to Selvi Selvam, the daughter of Karunanidhi, who they said, was also the actual owner of Ice Telecom,” he said. During the meeting, a deal was placed before him. “TVS-ICS, a joint venture of TVS Group and Ice Telecom, had been awarded a tender worth Rs 3,250 crore for the construction of 3G and 4G cellular towers and networking for the South Zone consisting of the four southern states and Chennai Circle. They claimed that they also have control over the contract for the whole country worth Rs 40,000 crore. These contracts, they claimed, had been awarded by A Raja, who was the then telecom minister,” the petitioner said.The engineer said he was informed that though they held the contract, they did not have the know-how and wanted him to use his international contacts to source large infrastructure players, who could execute the work. “They wanted to sell the contract licenses controlled by them for Rs 4,000 crore. And for working out the contacts, I was promised 1.5 per cent (commission), which works out to Rs 60 crore.”Dwivedi said he then neglected his business and concentrated on sourcing the right persons to handle the contract. Many experts came to the city on his invitation and were put up in five-star hotels as his guest and negotiated with Shyam and others. While substantial money exchanged hands, he was never compensated. And when the 2G scam hit the headlines, “Selvi, Shyam and all the others developed cold feet and just vanished, leaving me to face huge unpaid bills.”The petitioner claimed that he was threatened by Shyam that if he revealed a word about the deal, he and his whole family would be “finished off.” He said he was not allowed to meet Selvi, while Raja, through an intermediary, told him to “settle the issue” with her.
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