Baby Black May Not Come Back

(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”