NDTV - Malice Is Back

So after lying low for quite a while Alice is back. And I suppose there is no one better who could explain the violence or chaos in our modern times. Well, that’s not me but Barkha Dutt talking. In her latest post in Hindustan Times she gets Alice from wonderland to explain ‘Why this Kolaveri Di’. I would have thought the popular Tanglish song Kolaveri would have explained the slap that Sharad Pawar got from Harvinder Singh. Not enough, maybe! So Kolaveri and Alice collaborate for the first time to explain the growing intolerance in our society. This man who slapped Pawar is the cause of all this pain in her. Of course, Barkha does not find it worth lamenting that a few days ago some politicians violently kicked some men at the Phulpur rally of Rahul Gandhi. That group of politicians also had a man who is the spouse of a co-worker of Barkha at NDTV. I call it all “experience truth, my way”! But let me not make it all about Alice and our intolerance because this one is about malice in a maze of the financial blunderland called NDTV. Barkha usually relies on Alice to explain the toughest of issues so I wonder if Alice will be handy to take NDTV through its latest blunderland. Well, anyone alleging anything against NDTV is nothing but Malice, that distant cousin of Alice.

On November 25 news broke online about an affidavit filed by an IT Commissioner, S.K. Shrivastava,  in the special CBI court of Judge O.P. Saini. This application sought to make him a prosecution witness in the 2G scam trial. Among many other contentions, one that deserves attention is the allegation he makes that NDTV and group companies were involved in laundering over 2000 crores of bribe money from the 2G scam. The application also mentions attempts by then Finance Minister P. Chidambaram to block investigations into the financial dealings of NDTV and group companies. That’s really the long and short of it. Should you wish to go into the entire 32 page affidavit you can find it HERE. It does make sorry reading to say the least.

But the story of NDTV's financial stories started a long time ago. Read the post "NDTV- We the poodles, Crime pays" to refresh an old case from the 1990s. How that case got buried is a mystery of sorts.

Ever since Radiagate broke in November 2010 NDTV has been under a scanner. In an article titled “NDTV juggles funds, shares abroad, avoids tax” (Dec 2010) The Sunday Guardian explains how a number of subsidiaries were set up abroad and used to violate Indian corporate and tax laws. Here’s an excerpt:

“…To trace the financial jugglery involved in the whole process light must be shed on how these companies have been operating. In 2006-07, New Delhi Television Limited set up a legal entity in the Netherlands under the name NDTV BV, which in turn set up the NDTV Network Plc in the UK. The Indian company invested around Rs 57.45 lakh in the shares of NDTV Networks BV, thus making it its 100% subsidiary. NDTV BV, in turn, set up Plc as an indirect subsidiary…..The UK subsidiary also raised $100 million by issuing convertible bonds through private placements. NDTV's annual report of 2007-08, under the category of "contingent liabilities not provided in respect of"…..Mention must also be made of a November 2010 report that says US based Scripps Networks is acquiring 69% stakes in NDTV Lifestyle for $55 million. NDTV Lifestyle is held by NDTV Network Plc, UK. Take another November 2010 report, which says, shares of NDTV shot up by over 7% after the company announced that NDTV Networks Plc, has repurchased the $100 million coupon bonds due 2012….Is wealth being created and retained abroad without any benefit to NDTV shareholders?”

That was after the same Sunday Guardian carried a previous story (Dec 2010): “NDTV-ICICI loan chicanery saved Roys”. “NDTV Limited and associate companies in which Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy have a majority stake have indulged in financial misdemeanours and malpractices in connivance with ICICI Bank, and raised funds by misdeclaration of the value of shares in NDTV. These shares were held by a company called RRPR Holding Private Limited. The deal took place between July and October 2008 during a "buyback" of shares from the stock market announced by NDTV Limited at the price of Rs 439 per share”. A lot more has been written and Sunday Guardian sent NDTV nine questions to respond to. NDTV CEO KVL Narayana Rao responded thus: “Your fax of 3rd December 2010, is riddled with innuendos and false accusations. While we have answered all your questions, we reserve the rights under civil and criminal law both against your publication and against any individuals in your organisation”. He then goes on with further explanation which doesn’t really seem convincing except for inferring malicious accusations. But threat of criminal defamation? Why is it that NDTV is so trigger happy with such threats? And while Barkha Dutt mentions there is a case in the courts I am yet to find any defamation case filed by NDTV against Sunday Guardian anywhere. That story rested there.

How does Alice find her way through such a maze of financial blunderland? One might even wonder what does an ordinary news and entertainment company, like NDTV, from India do with so many companies established abroad. There’s even mention of a subsidiary in Holland that has just a postal address with no office, employees or any operations. Surely, this maze of wonderland must have some purpose. Mystery! Even more intriguing is the fact that since NDTV went public it has consistently been making losses and its share prices have hit new lows frequently. Moneylife, a financial site managed by Sucheta Dalal, has a stinging report on its performance. Here are some excerpts from “Glamour stocks, ugly returns” (August 2011):

“NDTV got listed in 2004 and is trading below its listed price after seven years. It has given a negative return of 19% compounded in the past five years and a total shareholder return (TSR) of negative 66% for the same period…..Its credibility is at a nadir (after the recent phone-tapping controversy) and its finances are in a mess. NDTV has rarely made money from operations. For the past few years, its consolidated operations have been making cash losses and it has been running on money made by selling loss-making subsidiaries to strategic investors. But capitalism is not at work in India. NDTV won’t fade away in a hurry. Indeed, every few months, the financially-beleaguered NDTV manages to get ‘strategic’ investors with deep pockets and top-flight private equity investors to step in and pick up big chunks of its equity at fancy valuations. In the 3rd week of June, DE Shaw, a $20-billion hedge fund which prefers to call itself an ‘investment and technology development company’, picked up a 14.2% stake in NDTV providing an exit to Goldman Sachs, another blue-chip investor that probably exited at a loss. NDTV’s stock was listed at Rs100 in 2004; the stock rose to Rs511 in January 2008 on the promise of a financial performance which has never materialised. It is now at Rs63—down 32% even from the issue price, after seven years of listing—and down a whopping 86% from its peak. Interestingly, despite the DE Shaw acquisition, the stock has barely moved. Maybe, the market doesn’t quite trust this information. That says a lot about not just NDTV but DE Shaw as well. As happens with glamour stocks, DE Shaw could be a front for someone else. Coincidentally, DE Shaw has a tie-up in India with Reliance Industries to sell financial services”.

To on ordinary blogger accusing NDTV of shoddy journalism they issued a legal notice charging him with libel. NDTV threatened those who leaked the Radia tapes with defamatory action. NDTV threatened Sunday Guardian with legal action for defamation and false accusations. In the last two cases we have seen no record of any legal cases being filed by NDTV. To the current petition by S.K. Shrivastava, the IT Commissioner, NDTV has once again alleged malice and defamation. Their CEO Vikram Chandra, has tweeted that NDTV has filed a defamation suit against the man on November 25. A detailed report about such a case was not available anywhere, including their website, at the time of writing. To the Moneylife article one doesn’t know if there was ever a response. Vikram also stated that a previously similar petition of Shrivastava was dismissed with fines. But that was about other IT officers and this one need not meet the same fate. Charges for laundering 2G Scam money are not about some IT officers alone, it involves black money and a national issue.

Bankers and lenders usually have a 1000-day test for a business to break even or even make profits. Normally a business would find it difficult to survive otherwise. NDTV seems to survive regardless of all business failures and financial losses. Does it make sense? And whenever someone questions their financial dealings it’s either false accusations or worse, MALICE! The options are for NDTV to come clean against all the allegations and state their position in a detailed document. The allegations in Shrivastava’s petition are serious enough to send many people to prison. Time will tell! And that may certainly not be a wonderland Alice might want to explore.

Chidambaram - The Unartful Dodger

September 24, 2011 Update: Following the case against him by Subramanian Swamy and recent revelations on the 2G scam PC simply has to quit. The man who simply romanced power all these years has reached his nadir. The sooner he leaves in grace the better for him.. That's all I have to say!

All the years of carefully cultivated poise, smooth-talking and intelligence can be brought down in a few minutes of insanity. P. Chidambaram is now feeling the heat from the fire he had hoped would never come to singe him. Congress spokespersons have repeatedly dismissed A. Raja’s allegations against PC and the PM as those of a man accused of a crime and cannot be taken seriously. So what should we take seriously? The utterances of people like Digivijay Singh and P. Chidambaram? Wait, Raja didn’t make these statements to NDTV, CNN-IBN or Headlines Today whose everlasting love for both DS and PC is unflinching. He made those statements in a court of law in his defence.  The court is not a place for allegations but a place where facts would count. If it were a media courtroom PC would have been already declared not guilty. Raja may be crooked and that implies he is smart enough to know what he is throwing around. The bad news for PC is that Raja also happens to be a lawyer himself and should know what perjury means. This is the same Raja that the PM had so strongly defended for a long time.

So what is PC's response? He finally gets the inspiration from his one-time adversary Digvijay and delivers the answer that would make DS proud. He invokes ‘saffron terror’! So after almost a year PC pulls the ‘saffron terror cheap trick’ again.

"I think they know that there is no connection to the so called scam in 2G. I think they are targeting selected ministers for other reasons in this case. What I suspect is that we have quickened the investigations into a number of bomb blast cases where right-wing fundamentalist organisations are involved. We have quickened....we have persuaded the court to hear two Ayodhya cases on a more or less day-to-day basis" he said. Oh yeah, we can all, of course, see the very clear connection between the 2G scam and right-wing terror cases. Don't we? His statement to Times Now some days back was delivered in quite an agitated tone. The artful dodger finally ran out of artful defences and smooth-talk. This was now the unartful dodger at work.

Did we know all this before? Many have written about it but the mainstream cacophony media circle believed in continuously glorifying a man who kept building his own grave. Where do we begin? Let’s start with Radiagate itself.

In the post Radia Tapes, PhoneTapping - Chidambaram Must Come Clean (December 2010) I have quoted Subramanian Swamy’s serious allegations against PC. Any other man with any self-respect would have dragged Swamy to courts over these allegations. Response from PC – nothing! That post also mentioned: “Spectrum shares being resold to a mid-east company called Etisalat should have raised the eyebrows of anyone concerned with national security. But any word ever from PC? Not to my knowledge. I am confident some story about Etisalat will soon be out in the open.”

There is still no case or charge sheet against Nira Radia. I wonder why not. Let’s go back again to another post UPAGovt. May Not Have A Case Against Nira Radia ... (December 2010) This is what that post stated: “…..The phone tapping was started precisely for that reason – spying…..one can safely assume the complaint to the then Finance Minister, P. Chidambaram, on the basis of which the phone tapping commenced might as well be fabricated. Else, Chidambaram can and should reveal who the complainant was. That is neither a matter of national secrecy nor a matter of grave danger. I wonder if the complaint was signed by anyone or was an anonymous one.” Well, the media still isn’t asking that all important question – who filed the complaint based on which the phone tapping was ordered? PC can surely tell us if it was a person, an organisation or an anonymous complaint. That little piece of information may well hold great secrets.

What next? In an alarming revelation Subramanian Swamy has now alleged PC has received 5000 crores in an interview with Asian Tribune (July 26). “I think he got Rs. Five thousand crores as a cut from Mr. Raja.” said Swamy. (In another 2G related development, the Enforcement Directorate has slapped a Rs 7,000-crore penalty on Etisalat-DB for alleged FEMA violations.) PC sent a legal notice to Reliance for remarks made by K R Raja (RIL employee) to corporate lobbyist Nira Radia which suggested that Chidambaram was a beneficiary in the 2G spectrum scam. RIL promptly apologised. Being a business unit RIL would hardly like to cross swords with the Home Minister or his government. Quite understandable! But the allegation by Swamy is similar and even puts a number to it and is far more serious. No response yet from PC. Wait and watch!

In another case concerning Intelligence Bureau, although unrelated, R.N. Kulkarni, who served in the IB for over three decades and retired as joint assistant director, has filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in the Karnataka High Court questioning the agency’s legitimacy. Outlook magazine reports on that development that the IB, RAW and other Intelligence agencies are not accountable to parliament. They’re practically extra-constitutional. Not surprisingly politicians use these organisations for political purposes. I didn’t say that. That these agencies are being used for spying on political rivals comes from none other than former Home Secretary G.K. Pillai (IndiaToday). Guess who is in charge of the intelligence agencies? And make another wild guess what our intelligence sleuths might be overburdened with rather than crime and security issues.

In the worst pasting anyone would have recently given PC, Ram Jethmalani writes a mini biography of the man. In a piece in The Sunday Guardian titled “Friend, father & philosopher of black money is Chidambaram” Jethmalani showers an honour on PC that no politician would ever want. After chronicling what would appear to be a political career tainted throughout, Jethmalani ends on the following note:

“Chidambaram's record as Home Minister has been disastrous. Neither has he made any impact on internal security, with the worst massacres of his own paramilitary forces taking place in his time, nor on terrorism, which carries on in complete complacency because there are neither effective preventive or punitive systems in place, nor political will and national legislation to combat terrorism…….What a laughing stock we must be before the world. It is almost as if India is determined that it shall not combat terrorism, shall not have enabling legislation as enacted by the US, such as the Homeland Security Act 2002, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 of UK and similar legislations in European governments. India is determined not to have an effective national agency on the lines of the Homeland Security Department of the US. The ramshackle National Investigation Agency showed itself as a complete failure during the recent Mumbai attacks. Understandable, because its only mandate appears to be to investigate "Hindu terror", the last refuge for failed and hopeless Congressmen like Chidambaram. The CCTNS, JIC, ARC, NTRO (presently in another scam), and NCTC remain effete, scattered and unmonitorable, even by the Home Ministry. With such an unequivocal determination by the UPA government not to address terrorism effectively, I can only grieve for my country.”

I’m too optimistic to grieve for my country yet. But I do grieve having such a former Finance and now Home Minister. He’s been reduced to an ‘unartful’ dodger.

Indian Media - 'Manmohan is dead and long live Rahul' ?

The headline is a direct quote from Ram Jethmalani's article mentioned in this post. On August 27, 2010 I wrote this post: 'Rahul Gandhi – India’s biggest disaster in the making'. Nothing has changed in the least bit since then. From equating the RSS with SIMI back then, this moron has travelled some more distance in equating Narendra Modi with Mao Zedong. This when he was confronted with straight, honest questions by young students in Ahmedabad. Straight, honest questions that the media should be confronting him with. Following the recent scams Rahul, like his mother, handed out a certificate of ‘cleanliness’ to Manmohan Singh.

Various allegations against Rahul Gandhi are floating on the internet for a long time now. Some of them serious enough to warrant a thorough investigation. Yet, our ass-licking media will neither report those nor even remotely mention those. Very few news papers carried bits and pieces in inner pages as an afterthought.

There is this allegation of rape against Rahul Gandhi which should have made front page headlines everywhere, but there was hardly a whisper. The only report being the legal notice sent by his lawyers to those who published the allegations. His being detained at Boston airport by the FBI in 2001, along with his latino girlfriend and US $ 200,000 in cash went unreported. He was supposedly travelling with his Italian passport. Questions have been raised over his education as well. His M.Phil claim is not supported by his certificate as can be seen in this article. And in all of this he travels abroad and has certificates  under the name of Raul Vinci. Effectively, this is a two faced man child who is being touted as the next  Prime Minister of India by the Congress, its cronies, and of course the servantile media. One magazine, India Today, went as far as asking Pranab Mukherjee if he would work in Rahul’s cabinet. The poor man out of decency responded stating it was time for him to retire.

Subramanian Swamy, the maverick politician of Janata Party,  has long been waging a lonely war against Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi. His speeches and articles against the two would read like a charge sheet, yet neither the Congress or the media raises these issues. They will probably wait till the whole chapter has reached a 2Scam-like situation before they answer the questions. Unfortunately, by then India would be down the drain by a few more lakhs of crores. It is in this context that Ram Jethmalani’s voice and concern needs wide coverage and here is what he wrote in The Sunday Guardian on December 5 (Excerpt provided below, read the full article here.)

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“Some questions for Congress’ Prince Charming” (By Ram Jethmalani)

1. We have no objection to your mother's ambition to see you installed as India's Prime Minister. Obviously she did not entertain this ambition either for herself or any of her children in 1991. Are you prepared to take the nation into confidence and disclose the qualifications you have acquired since then to take into your hands the destiny of this complex and most populous and poverty stricken democracy?

2. Do you agree that the best available statesman in the country should fill that post? If yes, how have you convinced yourself that you are the one? We would not mind if your mother answers this question. We hope you will not turn to our dear friends Mani Shankar Aiyar or Abhishek Singhvi to ghost write the answers.

3. We are highly appreciative of the Election Commission which compels candidates for public office to disclose their material assets.

We wish they logically mandate the disclosure of intellectual assets as well. But if democracy is all about transparency, would you kindly let the nation know what academic qualifications you have acquired, when, how and from which institutions. It will help if you also tell the curious Indian nation what books you have read during the last five years; have you published any articles or any readable material on politics, economics, terrorism, war and peace? Is there any speech in Parliament, to the local Rotary Club or to a bunch of tiny toddlers with a single quotable quote that illumines or inspires and gives us some clue to your intellectual attainments? We know quite a few talented young men in the Congress party and naturally people would like to be satisfied that you are better endowed than them all. That your mother is Soniaji or your father was Rajivji is not enough evidence.

4. There have been oft-repeated charges of financial impropriety and worse against your family, including by the president of Janata Party, Subramanian Swamy, Swiss magazines and, most unusually in a book on the KGB. Why have you not responded?

If you plead ignorance of all the stuff mentioned in the questions you do not deserve to be India's Prime Minister any way. Will the free press look into this serious business and make effective the People's Right to Know?

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It is time our servantile media picked up the cue and started asking questions. India deserves her dignity to be restored once again. The ordinary men, women and children of this country could do with an honest and sincere PM for a change, not a two faced toddler like Rahul Gandhi or Raul Vinci. With so much written about Rahul Gandhi on these lines let us see if Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai, Arun Poorie, Prabhu Chawla, Vir Sanghvi, M.J. Akbar can finally start asking truthful questions. (The first in the list should be fired anyway) Else, they will continue to cement their reputation as stool pigeons and not journalists.