(This is a MaxiPost)
“The richest one percent of this country
owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes
from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest
accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate
speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out
there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules,
pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick
that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the
hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a
democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've
got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you”
– Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street”
In every government, in every country
there are always some who protect white-collar criminals. It is these
white-collar criminals that invariably fund political parties. It’s democracy!
Chairman and wife have two companies.
One is a manufacturing company, the other a marketing company. Manufacturing
company sells products to Marketing Company. Marketing company then sells it to
traders at a 40% mark up. There is a
trick. In the state with the manufacturing units the factories directly sell to
traders at factory price and collect the mark up in cash. Every month a branch employee
takes the cash in a suitcase to the head office. Nobody counts that cash. It is
handed over to the Chairman with no questions asked. Chairman’s wife wants to
be a paperback writer. She has no particular talent or skills in writing. She
writes books about big names and celebrities. She gives interviews to the
press. All the cash in a suitcase is black money, unaccounted money. Wife uses
that money to promote herself and buy expensive lingerie and jewellery. She
hosts parties with the most expensive cut-glass kitchen items. Chairman buys
more properties with cash. There, friends, meet big black-money and how black
money is put to use.
The story above wasn’t a figment of my
imagination. It’s a true story. Then the simplest of stories is how you buy a
house. Builder demands some percentage of payment in unaccounted cash. You’re a
poor sucker seeking a house. You draw on your savings, beg, steal or borrow and
pay him the cash. Your housing loan bank or complany won’t lend you for black
money. Builder too needs cash because he needs to pay political pigs and Babus
to get a lot of clearances. As the DLF Chairman says “it is to facilitate speedy disposal” so not a bribe. That’s easy to
understand, isn’t it? And mostly, the cash is paid upfront before you can even
get a house allotted on paper. Cheque can wait, cash cannot. It’s a rule made
by none other than our sick politicians. The scumbags who created this practice
of black economy are none other than the people you vote for; regardless of
which party or candidate you voted for. A good number of them are white-collar
criminals. We usually set a thief to catch a thief but in politics the thief
won’t help you catch other thieves. You can buy large consignments of any
product from Delhi (and some other states) in cash without bills and these
transactions happen every single day. Bogus documents are made for transport
and then destroyed. It’s not rocket science.
Some good guys made a lot of noise about
black money stashed abroad for quite a while. They were well-meaning and wanted
to stop the loot of the nation and bring the loot back and punish the culprits.
They forced the govt to act and ever since then our govt (earlier under Cong)
signed a lot of deals to protect the criminals. Then the BJP made a lot of
noise about it and promised to bring back the loot and punish the criminals.
And now that they are in power the chickens make the same excuses that the
previous govt made. At the heart of this whole nonsense now is one man: Mahatma Arun Jaitley:
People have a way of mocking idiotic ministers who blabber too much and that is what happened to AJ after Ram Jethmalani wrote him a 10-point letter on black money. RamJ’s letter ridicules the GOI appeal to SC to hide names of foreign accounts because of some treaty. Prior to this, Arun Jaitley out of the blue went on a TV Yatra to blabber about and indulge in some stupid political chest-thumping about black money. 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. He is described as a man who has friends across the political spectrum. He is one man the media never criticises. After his stupid blabbering on TV channels the SC demanded all the names in a sealed envelope and they too buried it for the future. This is exactly what all the political parties want: to bury the black money episode.
For over 2 years the previous Congress
govt dodged the SC by avoiding an SIT as ordered and now the current BJP govt
dodges the black money issue with clever skulduggery by a lawyer. Oh wait,
here’s something that AJ said long back about lawyers advising the PM that he
should be reminded of:
That apart, why would a Finance Minister
frequently appear on a channel like NDTV
which is accused of money laundering and tax evasion? Why shouldn’t I believe
AJ might just as well be having tea or dinners with one of those black money
hoarders? An IT letter to
owners of NDTV indicates default to the tune of 539 crores. There are many
allegations against NDTV which need a thorough investigation but AJ seems to
somehow love this channel and their anchors despite their well-known anti-BJP
propaganda and campaign. Strange magic!
There are other issues like where an NDTV employee was given luxury trips
abroad because his wife was the one assessing their accounts at the IT office.
The stories of NDTV’s financial bungling are too many to narrate here. It
doesn’t stop there. AJ’s adventures get even better by the day.
A day ago AJ was in the company of Rajdeep Sardesai and P. Chidambaram. First, AJ and PC
launched Rajdeep’s book on Elections 2014. Like Barkha, this scumbag Rajdeep
has carried out an anti-BJP campaign for long. But if that was political we
could have dismissed it. It wasn’t merely political. Rajdeep ran a smear
campaign against the current PM Narendra Modi calling him “Mass murderer, hero
of hatred” in public forums as also in his articles. That Rajdeep has abused
Modi for all these years, even physically assaulted Modi supporters in New York
(and still holds him complicit for the 2002 riots) seems to matter little to
AJ. There has to be some motivation for
this. There was more after the book launch:
After the launch AJ then had a debate
(rather friendly-fire) with his old friend PC on economics and stuff. Going by
the crap the two discussed it would seem AJ was backing all the policies of UPA
and PC. Don’t trust me trust this article by TheJaggi which perfectly records the transactions as “Tweedledee, Tweedledum in a pillow fight”.
PC has been rightly called by RamJ as the “Friend, father and philosopher of black money”. Many rules and policies birthed
by PC have indeed appeared to protect white-collar criminals rather than punish
them. AJ and PC make a lovely couple. I call AJ “PC in Pyjamas” because most of
his acts pretty much resemble those of PC. Both are darlings of NDTV and the
rest of the media. Now let’s get to the black money nonsense.
An Indian entity to hold an account
abroad needs RBI permission. If an Indian entity does hold an account it has to
be reflected in their financial and IT returns. Therefore, it is easy to sort
out such names from the list of 700-800 that is with the SIT. If such companies
have committed any evasion it is not very hard to deal with and shouldn’t really
be worthy of the great drama that surrounds the story. Next, some smart
companies have floated companies abroad for transactions and they route their
incomes through places like Lichtenstein or Mauritius or Cayman Islands with
lower taxation and thus claim protection under DTAA. Are these accounts of any
real interest? There may be thousands more of these. Considering a large number
of businesses here in India, big and small, generate black money every single day
that should be of greater interest to us and the govt. But the foreign-held black money story is more dramatic and more
romantic it seems because it can be used as a political tool. And the
politicians who may be involved in such foreign accounts aren’t in any regular
type business as we know it. Dr Subramaniam Swamy thus describes correctly on what should be of
interest to us:
"I am not
surprised because I had warned the government that these names have to be made
public. Don't quote the Direct Tax Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) between India and
Germany and India and France, because that is applicable to Indians who reside
in those countries who either pay taxes in India or do not pay adequate
taxes," Swamy told ANI… We are not talking about this type of black money
and we are not talking about tax avoidance as a primary problem. We are talking
about getting bribes in defence deals, the 2G spectrum scam, via drug
trafficking and so on. Perhaps we should call this black money as 'red money”
Red money! That is right.
That is what the real loot is that the GOI should be looking for. Illegal commissions
and bribes paid to politicians directly into foreign accounts in defence deals,
spectrum deals, commercial aircraft deals (for AI) and agreements prejudicial
to India’s interest. There could be many “hawala”
accounts that fund investments into various companies including our crooked
media houses. There could be many “hawala” accounts that could be funding
terrorist operations and supply of illegal weapons to various anti-India forces
within and without India. We have known Ottavio
Quattrocchi of the Bofors scandal to have gotten access to his ill-gotten
loot when the Congress govt de-froze his bank account abroad. For long this
particular article from a Swiss magazine has been quoted by Swamy and others
about Rajiv Gandhi’s millions
stashed abroad:
The “Will bring back black money” chant story is as much a political
slogan as “Garibi Hatao” was. If it
had to happen it would have happened swiftly. Three years have already passed.
And who knows, it has the potential to end up like the Bofors story which
remains unresolved for almost three decades now.
Arun Jaitley is an intelligent,
articulate man and a brilliant orator. He rarely says anything inaccurate in
parliament or outside. Therefore, his motivation or compulsion to hobnob with
his potential targets is all the more intriguing. Remember, our media crooks
were thrilled to bits when a lower court and later SC ruled PC could not be
made an accused in the 2G scam in the case filed by Swamy. After BJP won the LS
elections the same media crooks were clamouring for AJ as Finance Minister. For
me, that is one reason to suspect a man, if the criminal media clamours for
him.
Prior to the LS elections almost every
party (even many in the BJP of the Lutyens Club) were against Modi becoming PM.
Some of these media crooks who are in deep love with PC and AJ were hoping for
a coalition govt if BJP won and somehow AJ would become Prime Minister. AJ is
an old friend of Modi from the Gujarat campaign days when AJ was in charge of
the state campaigns. Having to play second fiddle has many adverse effects. PC
too was touted as a potential PM (to replace MMS) by his media darlings. Would you now dare to imagine AJ as your PM?
It would be like Alfred Hitchcock planning the perfect nightmare to wake you
up. As for black money, I will just leave you with a very old song:
“Black is black, I want my baby back/ It's gray, it's gray/
Since she went away, Ooh-Ooh/ What can I do/ 'Cause I'm feelin' blue
If I had my way, She'd be back today/ But she don't intend/ To see
me again, Ooh-Ooh
What can I do 'Cause I'm feelin' blue”