One of the services rendered by Veena T, daughter of former Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, to receive ₹2.78 crore from Cochin Minerals and Rutile Limited (CMRL) was to advise the company to keep servers and software updated.

Veena, who is accused of corporate fraud by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), and now faces probe of the Directorate of Enforcement (ED), sent 93 mails between 2017 and 2020 to the CMRL raising invoices for what she called as 'advisory and consulting services', but not a single mail was sent on service delivery. 

Her statements produced in the report show that the CMRL showed no urgency on completion of software design and the meetings were held at the residential office of the CMRL MD, Sasidharan Kartha. Veena told the SFIO team that Exalogic spent two years (2017-2019) on the design of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, only to decide later that readily available software in the market can be used. Exalogic, which had been given the contract to design the software, opted out but Veena continued to give consultancy to the CMRL.

CMRL, which specialises in the production of synthetic rutile and related chemical products, was among the 12 clients of Exalogic. All the other clients were schools, colleges and education consultancy firms. Veena has admitted that CMRL was the only company to which she provided consultancy services. Exalogic's primary software product was meant for school management and it was this factor which made the SFIO curious about the association between the CMRL and Exalogic. 

In December 2016, the CMRL appointed Veena as an IT & Marketing consultant. The contract was effective from January 1, 2017, with a monthly remuneration of ₹5 lakh. In March 2017, the CMRL entered into a service level agreement with Exalogic for the development, maintenance and management of software for CMRL's business operations for a monthly remuneration of ₹3 lakh. 

Veena's emails only focused on sending invoices and arranging payments for Exalogic and herself. No mail was sent on update of service delivery, the probe revealed. The SFIO further found out that majority of her clients were from Northern Kerala and the normal mode of communication was through emails, however with the CMRL, which was Exalogic's biggest client, there was no such communication. 

According to Veena, CMRL had decided to buy a software from market for business operations. The SFIO report showed that the CMRL, infact, engaged another company later for the same work. This company performed a structured study and submitted a report whereas Veena's involvement lacked evidence of deliverables despite receiving payment of more than 75 times as that was paid to the other company. 

Former software developers employed at Exalogic, in their statements, said that they were not involved in any project related to the CMRL. Account statements showed that Exalogic had merely routed the funds received from the CMRL back to Empower India Capital Investment Private Limited (EICPL) operated by Sasidharan Kartha as repayments of loan totalling ₹50 lakh availed by the company. "This indicates that the funds were not used for providing IT services, but rather for repaying existing liabilities," the SFIO report stated. 

Veena was questioned by the SFIO on the lack of emails. She replied that most of the interactions with the CMRL happened in person and some were through online meetings. "The management was more comfortable in personal meetings and hence there was no email communication or other documentary correspondence regarding the software," her reply showed. She also told the SFIO that since the company Exalogic was closed long back, she didn't have any other documentary evidence to prove services rendered by her. 

The SFIO, stated in the report that there was a clear intent to misuse the consultancy agreements to facilitate financial misappropriation. 

The CPM, while terming the agencies' probe as political conspiracy, has reiterated that the remuneration received was legal and was received via bank for which GST was paid. In the charge sheet submitted by the SFIO, Veena is liable to be punished under section 447 of the Companies Act, 2013. This section deals with punishment for fraud.