In
the first few weeks after ModiSarkar came to power in 2014, they set up an SIT on black money. I don’t know what
happened to that SIT and what report it has submitted in four years since. In
any case, no black money of any quantity has come back and this was one of the
promises PM Modi had made – to bring back black money. I was pretty sure no
black money is ever coming back and therefore, in a few months after this SIT,
I wrote “Baby black is not coming back”. Lists were collected from various foreign banks during the
previous Congress govt who decided not to disclose any names. ModiSarkar went
one better; they appealed to the SC to hide many names claiming this would
affect treaties with other countries. Arun
Jaitley had more to show for all this.
Jaitley
played games with the SC and the black money hoarders. Back in October 2014 Ram
Jethmalani wrote a letter to
AJ about it. Before these events, Jaitley (as usual) was in his “Durbar”
mouthing stupid statements (I quote from my post linked in the first para): “To his eternal mutual-fan Barkha Dutt he said “I won’t be embarrassed if the names are released”
meaning the BJP won’t be affected. To Navika Kumar on TimesNow he said “I am not saying anything, I am just smiling”
when asked if there were any Congress names. AJ is used to political games in
the Lutyens club”. AJ doesn’t like Defence or I&B (he is fit for
only I&B though). PC too didn’t like the Home Ministry. Both of them like
the “Big boys club” and both them
are darlings of the media. You will
NEVER find any serious criticism of these two in the media:
I
don’t have any doubts that many fraudsters and black money hoarders are being deliberately protected. The list of
names was to be given to SC by the SIT in a “sealed envelope”. I guess the list
would be opened and disclosed in about 50 years when most of us are dead. Nobody is going to jail; no black money
will ever be recovered. Now we are up against the financial crimes of Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi and maybe a few more. In their own diamond industry,
traders didn’t trust these two and for few years sold them stuff only against
cash. Trust me, the Indian banking system is the most subject to fraudulent
acts or abuse of power by the managers and directors of every bank. This is
particularly with the PSU banks.
I
have known businessmen and banks to collude and create and encash bogus LCs
without material ever being actually sold. I have known businessmen and banks
collude to discount bills of large sums for material never sold. I have known
banks to banks to discount even bogus PDCs. I know of manufacturers showing
billing and despatch from Daman or Silvassa to escape excise in the past.
Such units had no more than a small shop in Daman/Silvassa with a table and
chair in the place. I know a particular case where the bank and the business
owner continued this practice over years. What the businessman did with the
fraudulent borrowings is to invest in Real Estate. He made handsome gains in
the real estate business in a short period and never defaulted on the
borrowings so nobody faced any problems. Some years later the real estate
business collapsed and the bank was in a deep hole and so was the businessman.
They somehow managed to cover up the entire fraud.
Needless
to say, in all these scams (of much smaller denominations) the bank manager
gets a handsome “reward”. Many of these usually happen at banks at industrial
zones where managers personally come to know the units and their owners quite
well as also their modus operandi. They rely on the security of assets to cover
up for their collusion. Diamonds are
forever but they can also be FAKE, as we discovered in the recent cases.
Some snippets in the Nirav-Mehul episode make interesting reading:
It’s
interesting what Sanjay Pugalia says in his tweet above. Not only did Nirav
Modi know his scams were coming out, he also planned well in advance to escape
from India – Lock, Stock and Children.
Surely, all the Babus and bank managers he must have “oiled” so well must have
given him enough tips and time to escape. Mehul Choksi has also run off abroad.
Hard to say if these guys are going to come back or if they hold citizenships
of other countries. Doesn’t matter, none of the scam money is ever going to
come back. Even in the case of Lalu Prasad, the courts sent him to jail but
nary a mention of the recovery of money he was convicted of looting.
India has become a
Scamsters Paradise.
Thanks mostly to the Congress for this. If you have some connections you can
loot Indian banks at will. The Congress is the “Congotri” of scams and corruption. From Govt scams to others like
Vadra to the latest Nirav-Mehul scams, I have no doubts all of these are
blessed by Congress. The problem is, PM
Modi is unable or unwilling to act – hard to tell why. Maybe Jaitley
influences the course of dealing with scamsters beyond NaMo’s control.
Otherwise, how does one explain the govt and its ministers still sleeping and
romancing criminal fraudsters like NDTV?
Very
frequently, the frauds of NDTV keep coming out. Lately, a scam through FIPB
clearance is out. PC’s son Karti is
known and reported to have acted as a “broker” for such clearances and alleged
to have made a lot of money through such brokerage. PC possessed a sealed
letter to the SC on the Aircel-Maxis
scam at his home which was discovered during the raid. Both PC and Karti are
being investigated in the case. How these two fraudsters still roam around
nonchalantly and keep blabbering nonsense against PM Modi is beyond
comprehension. This can happen only in India. All these scamsters are UNTOUCHABLES. None of this will affect
Jaitley one bit. AJ is just an unelectable Lutyens Durbar operator. But it
dents the credibility of PM Modi a lot and he seems helpless despite being the
most powerful PM in office in over 3 decades. Sample this by MD Nalapat in the Sunday
Guardian:
“his “Modi’s) government has ordered the forcible merger of a
Mumbai-based company with a now defunct stock exchange begun by the major
shareholder of the former. Oddly, the stockbrokers who actually owed the moneys
in default seem to have escaped penal action thus far, while a separate company
has been marked for destruction through forcible payment by it of the dues of
the other entity. There have been whispers that the move against this company
was taken on the instance of a former Finance Minister, who wanted to both
destroy an exchange competing with a favourite of his, as well as to protect
the parties guilty of default…”
It
is also interesting how the Congis and PC, in particular, made life for the
scamsters a lot easier by tweaking the bank security systems. The Congress govt
let go a more secure but cheaper security system in favour of a “Finacle” by Infosys that cost some 25
times more at 1000 crores and with some 1000 more holes in it. I wonder if “Finacle” stands for “Financial
Debacle”. The managers of PNB in Nirav Modi scam had access to all the
security systems:
The
NDTV saga is all the more alarming and starting to become a joke with
ModiSarkar looking scared to even touch them. Prannoy Roy now writes letters to the PM claiming Subramanian Swamy
exposing their frauds will “hurt India” and damage “freedom of Press”.
NONSENSE! NDTV is a fraudulent, anti-national entity that neither stands for
India nor for any journalistic ethics or freedom. But I have no doubts that
this FIPB crap is not some investment issue but is an outright fraud. I also
have no doubts that a lot of kickbacks would have gone to those who allowed
this money-laundering. Anyone can easily guess whose funds NDTV was laundering:
In
the Nirav Modi episode too a lot of Congis are linked – from Pappu to Sibal to
Abhishek Singhvi. PM Modi may not be personally corrupt or dishonest in anyway
whatsoever. Nobody ever questions his integrity. But all these incidents and
many more that are yet to come out do
question his moral authority to talk endlessly about the “Fight against
corruption”. There is something else that ModiSarkar could have done, apart
from the SC-demanded SIT on black money.
At
the beginning of his term, PM Modi should have ordered all PSU banks to send in
a list of all defaulters of over some amount (say 10 crores or so). All of
these people put together may not have exceeded one lakh in number. Scrutiny of
this small population is not difficult for a govt committed to put away
scamsters. Had ModiSarkar done this and acted on defaulters then many
continuing scams could have been averted and many corrupt banks exposed. Even
during Demonetisation many banks and managers were found carrying out
fraudulent acts and recycling black money for bigwigs.
Who
knows, maybe ModiSarkar did have the list of all the defaulters and scamsters.
But may the FM and the FinMin decided to turn a blind-eye for the reason that a
large-scale crack down might see job-losses and shutting down of many business
units. That was a risk worth taking at
the start of the term of ModiSarkar than seeing unemployment rise and units
shutting down even otherwise at the end of four years of BJP rule. Under
Congress, India had become a Scamsters Paradise and none of the scamsters have
lost anything under ModiSarkar either. The only real fools are the little
people who have to face rejections by banks for small loans or inquiries by the
IT department or other departments. Continuance of the scamsters paradise will
only produce more scamsters, not end corruption and frauds. Nirav or Mehul are
nothing in this whole game.
