SCAMSTERS INC.

DESPITE the BJP’s tall claims about coming to power at the centre and installing L K Advani as its prime minister, the just concluded election for the 26 Lok Sabha seats in Gujarat have exposed many chinks in the party’s shining armour of ‘morality’ and ‘principles’. The BJP, which for long marketed itself as the party with a difference, this time stood exposed right from the stage of choosing its candidates for the 26 seats in Gujarat.

Foregoing all its acclaimed inhibitions, the BJP happily gave party nominations not only to three bank fraud accused in Panchmahal, Anand and Navsari but also to as many as three turncoats from its arch rival Congress in Patan, Dahod and Surendranagar.

While the bank scamsters Prabhatsinh Chauhan (Panchmahal), Deepak Saathi (Anand) and C R Patil (Navsari) were long time BJP leaders in their own territories, the party could not find any one from its rank and file for constituencies like Patan, Dahod and Surendranagar where the electorate’s caste arithmetic required a backward Thakore, a tribal and a Koli to be chosen.
This compulsion of having to fall back upon defectors from Congress in the tribal and backward dominated seats while finding it easy to choose a new face in urban areas proves the oft-repeated perception that the BJP is indeed a party of urban and upper classes.

When it came to choosing new candidates for the tribal seat of Dahod and the backward dominated seats of Surendranagar and Patan, there were no suitable people available from among the BJP’s rank and file and thus Congress defectors with dubious track records had to be chosen as nominees of the party with ‘principles’.

But the same BJP did not feel any problem of dearth of people from its ranks while searching for replacements in urban, middle class seats like Rajkot, Surat, Panchmahal and Navsari where alternative people were readily available.

This dichotomy of enjoying easy availability of second line leadership in urban, middle class areas but dearth of such people from among its ranks in backward dominated and tribal areas is almost an incontrovertible proof of the BJP’s class and caste bias.

The BJP’s compulsions to give party tickets to tainted leaders and turncoats stemmed from chief minister Narendra Modi’s insistence on new faces, a euphemism for proven psychophants who would remain ever obliged to him for having sent them to Lok Sabha. While choosing the candidates for Gujarat’s 26 seats, the BJP high command actually succumbed to the high-handedness of its rabble-rousing chief minister Narendra Modi who was also keen to settle his scores with the party’s senior MPs who had raised their voices against his autocratic style of functioning.

Thus, in its bid to satisfy the whims of Modi, the BJP dropped former union ministers Kashiram Rana and Dr Vallabh Kathiria in Surat and Rajkot respectively, even if that meant fielding political novices for the two seats reputed to be the party’s fortresses for two decades.
Naturally, both the seats proved to be death traps for the BJP’s new candidates as the party’s rank and file virtually revolted in Surat and Rajkot.

While the new BJP nominee Darshana Zardosh in Surat faced the wrath of laid off diamond workers for whom Modi refused to announce any relief package, the BJP workers in Rajkot remained in mutiny mood with allegations making the rounds that the new nominee Kiran Patel procured the party ticket through his money power generated from the chain of schools his family runs in the city.

Surat and Rajkot are not the only trouble-spots for the BJP as its fortress in Gandhinagar, from where its “prime minister” in waiting is seeking re-election, is also under siege with a massive consolidation of Patel backlash personified in the Congress nominee Suresh Patel.

As the influential Patels are cut up with the BJP ever since their patriarch Keshubhai Patel was unseated as chief minister by Modi, the Congress sought to cash in on the situation arising out of the delimitation exercise making the Lok Sabha constituency a Patel dominated seat. Even as Congress nominee went about transforming Patel resentment against BJP into votes for himself, Advani’s trouble multiplied with the VHP cadres refusing to campaign in his favour in protest against the demolition of illegally built temples in Gandhinagar last year.

Though the VHP declared its last minute support to Advani, the cadres were not amused and remained away from working for the party. The vacuum caused by the VHP cadres staying away was probably filled by the “Mantranaad” programmes organised all over the state by the Art of Living wherein people were clearly asked to vote for the party which would “bring black money back from foreign banks”.

The Election Commission had rightly called the bluff of the Art of Living programmes and slapped notices on them for violation of Model Code of Conduct. In some places, the EC has told the BJP candidates who shared the dais at “Mantranaad” discourses that the function’s expenditures would be added to their election expenses account.

Moreover, the Supreme Court’s ruling to start investigation into the role of Modi in the 2002 anti-Muslim riots also could not be turned into BJP’s advantage as the chief minister got only a day to launch his tirade against the centre. All that Modi could do was to try and fool his audience by declaring that he is ready to be hanged, not just jailed.

Source: pd.cpim.org

The CBI arrested three more people in the alleged irregularities in recruitment of constables in CRPF. They include DIG, CRPF,
Muzaffarpur, P S Bakhala, a commandant from Bihar and Jharkhand B S Sidhu and a tout from New Delhi. Sidhu was posted at Daltonganj as commandant of the 134th Battalion. The investigating agency has so far arrested 11 persons in this connection.

Confirming the arrest of these three people, a CBI official said that they were produced before the special CBI court on Thursday itself. DIG Bakhala and commandant Sidhu were taken on police remand for further interrogation in the matter, he said.

A CBI official confided that a well organized racket had been clandestinely going on in the recruitment of constables in the CRPF. Prima facie it appeared that some senior CRPF officials were allegedly involved in the recruitment scam. Everything would come to light after a thorough probe into the matter, he said.

According to CBI sources, the CBI sleuths raided the house of DIG located in Ranchi and recovered several incriminating papers. Similarly, Sidhu's house in Chandigarh too was searched and several incriminating papers and 10 live cartridges were also recovered during a raid by the CBI team, sources said.

Incidentally, CRPF IG Pushkar Singh and several other persons, including middlemen, who were involved in the scam, are among those already arrested by the CBI team from different places across the country.

The investigating agency had seized about Rs 1.15 crore cash and documents relating to fixed deposits during search operation carried out at the IG's office and residential premises, sources said.

Source: TOI

Three illegal immigrants from India have been accused of running a 'fraud factory' by submitting hundreds of bogus visa applications to the Home Office and allowing foreign nationals to enter Britain.

The scale of the fraud was such that one of them boasted how easy it was to cheat the Home Office and obtain visas for people who did not have the necessary documents for legal entry into Britain.

A case on the visa fraud is currently being heard in the Isleworth Crown Court in west London.

The three Indians are Jatinder Sharma, 44, Neelam Sharma, 39 and Rakhi Shahi, 32, both of whom are reported to be married to Sharma. All three allegedly entered Britain using false documents. Francis Sheridan, prosecuting lawyer, said, "the fraud focused on abusing the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme which was designed to enable well qualified individuals with useful skills to work in Britain."

Between October 2006 and May last year, their company UniVisa, which posed as a company helping immigrants with paperwork, submitted 980 applications to the Home Office. In the process, the three earned hundreds of thousands of pounds. Sharma had pleaded guilty to immigration offences when his company provided customers with fake degree papers, references and CVs to help them enter Britain illegally.

Neelam Sharma and Rakhi Shahi are facing a similar range of charges at trial. They are also both accused of entering and remaining in Britain illegally.

Sheridan said, "Between them they submitted the largest number of fraudulent visa applications ever received by the Home Office from one source, making this the biggest immigration scam ever seen in this country."

He said that applicants with humble backgrounds were given false degrees, masters degrees, post-graduate qualifications and diplomas within a matter of months. "Shahi was so confident of her ability to cheat the system, she even started offering her services on a no win, no fee basis," he said.

Sheridan said when police raided their house in Southall, they discovered some 90,000 pages of documents, including 980 visa application files.

"They have made a fortune, there are no bones about that.

They were acting on behalf of clients to cheat the Home Office, to cheat the Home Office wholesale," added Sheridan.

Source: The Hindu

The Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) in its report on the Satyam scam has recommended that its erstwhile chairman and perpetrator of the fraud Ramalinga Raju be charged for 32 offences under the Indian Penal Code and The Companies Act. It says that Satyam made its first losses in 2007-08, and that promoter shareholding was corporatised in order to avoid short-term capital gains tax.

our investigative team also learns that Satyam's promoters pledged 3.61 crore shares of Maytas Infra, in an attempt to cover margin calls in December 2007. Pranshu Sikka reports.

It learnt from sources that the SFIO report has a number of major findings. The reports, sources say, recommends prosecution for Ram Mynampati, the Satyam employee who had taken Satyam’s charge as CEO intermediately post the Satyam scam. This prosecution has been recommended under Sections 201 sub-clause 1A, Section 211 sub-clause 7 and 8 and Section 209 sub-clause 5 of the Company’s Act. A then whole-time director, Ram Mynampati’s explanation in the scam involvement, SFIO says, is not “tenable” and therefore it recommends prosecution.

The Maytas connection

The SFIO has told the Ministry of Corporate Affairs that 3.6 crore shares of Maytas Infra were pledged by the promoters of Satyam Computers Services Ltd to meet the margin calls on December 18 2007.

There is another one very glaring connection: the report says Maytas Infra issued a public offer, a Mauitian firm acquired 38% equity share in the realty company. SFIO says these deals look suspicious and has forwarded the details of these deals to the Directorate of Enforcement for further investigation as it suspects that the money for this deal was routed through accounts of Satyam Computers Services Ltd.

Auditors’ role

About the role of Price Waterhouse, Satyam’s auditors during the scam, the SFIO has suggested their “connivance” with the then management of Satyam to carry out the fraud.

The SFIO is pretty damning in its report: it says the auditors did not understand complexities of electronic book keeping, which is a glaring accusation and added that the auditors did not even check 1% of the invoices submitted by the then management of Satyam, which again shows their whole callousness towards verifying the accounts.

The report has also recommended that the non-executive directors should refund the commission, which they have been paid to the tune of Rs 72 lakh odd over the past one year.

The fraud deconstructed

Sources say that, over the last ten years, the Raju brother had run over 374 companies. Out of these, about 158 odd ones, are directly under the scanner. 150 of these companies were involved in purchase of land whereas eight companies were involved in investments.

SFIO sources say that according to its findings, the Rajus were also selling their shares through four out of these eight companies. They did not want to sell the shares directly in the market because they thought that would impact the sentiment negatively and therefore they were selling their shares through these four investment companies.

As far as the companies involved in purchase of land are concerned, the money that was required was again being routed through these eight investment companies.

Another name which has emerged according to sources in the report is that Surya Narayana Raju, Ramalinga Raju’s brother. The SFIO report says he helped and abetted to the crime.

Source: CNBC-TV18

The union government Saturday told the Supreme Court that it was doing everything on the issue of retrieving over Rs.70 trillion ($1.4 trillion) in black money believed to be stashed away in foreign banks by rich Indians.

The government said this in an affidavit filed in the apex court in response to a lawsuit by former union law minister Ram Jethmalani, former Lok Sabha general secretary Subhash C. Kashyap and former Punjab Police chief K.P.S. Gill, which had sought the court's direction to the government to retrieve the unaccounted money.

In its affidavit, the government termed the lawsuit as "politically motivated" and questioned the timing of its filing, in the midst of the general elections, and sought its dismissal.

So...what next? any guess?

The Bofors gun payoff scandal flared up again Tuesday with the election-wrapped Congress coming under all round attack over the CBI decision to remove Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, the lone surviving suspect in the case, from its list of wanted persons.

The 12-year Interpol Red Corner Notice, or lookout notice, against Quattrocchi, who has till date evaded interrogation, was taken off from the "wanted" section of the agency's website, reportedly on the legal advice of Attorney General Milon Banerjee in October last year. As the CBI's move was scooped by the Indian Express newspaper Tuesday, two days before the third round of India's five-phase general elections, it provided readymade ammunition to political parties seeking to end five years of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accused the Congress of turning the CBI into a "Congress Bureau of Investigation" and branded the decision a "farewell gift" from the government to a "close friend" of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.BJP leader L.K. Advani, campaigning in Gujarat, said the decision proved that the Congress was not confident of returning to power after the staggered Lok Sabha elections ending next month.

"Manmohan Singh's party wanted to remove his name from the list. The decision indicates they think their party will not come back to power," he said. "I condemn the decision."

Under flak, CBI spokesperson Harsh Behl said the agency would inform the special judge of a Delhi court, trying the 1987 case of the Rs.640 million payoff for the Swedish howitzer guns, of the decision during the next hearing on April 30."The case has been under trial in the courts since 1999. The CBI has taken action on basis of legal advice of the highest order. We will inform the competent court," said Behl.

Quattrocchi, accused by the CBI of receiving millions of dollars in commissions for helping to fix the $1.4 billion gun deal in the mid-1980s, was detained in February 2007 in Argentina where he was holidaying with his wife on the basis of an Interpol warrant.

But the CBI took time in translating documents that were to be presented in the designated court there and put up a half-hearted effort towards his extradition. It lost the case for his extradition four months later.

The BJP's prime ministerial candidate Advani reminded voters that though the Congress led by Rajiv Gandhi won a thumping majority in the 1984 elections, it lost power five years later due to the Bofors controversy.In New Delhi, BJP general secretary Arun Jaitley was at his sarcastic best."The CBI has become an embarrassment for the entire country. Quattrochi has been a close friend of the Congress leadership. Therefore, at the time of the departure (of the UPA government), it is a gift to the citizen of a privileged country. It is a gift to a nation in law," he said.

The Congress tried to downplay the embarrassment, saying the Bofors row was "a dead horse"."Bofors has been a dead horse which the BJP has tried to flog in several elections, and it has not succeeded," said Congress spokesman Abhishek Manu Singhvi.

Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj argued that the government had nothing to do with the development."The government had no role in the removal of the red corner notice," he said. "The CBI acted solely on the advice of the attorney general. It is a politically motivated allegation."But the opposition was not satisfied.

While Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati alleged that the government was misusing the CBI, the Left parties described the move as a subversion of justice."The CBI decision to remove Ottavio Quattrocchi from its list of wanted persons has again unmasked the Congress," said Mayawati.

The case against Quattrocchi, known to be close to the late Rajiv Gandhi, who was prime minister in 1987 when the scandal broke, and his wife Sonia, has taken tortuous twists and turns after being named in a CBI chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribes in 1999.

Source: Express Buzz

The owner of a shopping mall, who allegedly played a key role in the DDA flat allotment fraud by pumping in Rs 15 lakh for cornering dwellings, has been arrested in the national capital, police said today.

Jeet Ram, who was on the run since the case came to light, was caught by the Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police's Crime Branch yesterday from Mam Mam Majesty Mall in Pitampura. He was one of the owners of the mall.

"We have caught Jeet Ram who was absconding. We are also trying to arrest other financiers who are involved in the case," Joint Commissioner of Police Amulya Patnaik told PTI.

This is the seventh arrest in the case of a group ofproperty dealers who entered into a conspiracy to corner DDA flats reserved for SC/STs by fraudulently applying in the name of people belonging to these communities.Jeet Ram's name cropped up during interrogation of Gautam, who allegedly managed to corner 40 flats in the draw of lots under various names.

According to Patnaik, the financier allegedly provided Rs 15 lakh to Gautam for committing the fraud. Gautam also issued post-dated cheques as a security in favour of Jeet Ram. Patnaik said police tried to catch the financier but was not successful till yesterday. "We managed to catch him after one of our teams kept a close watch on the mall," he said.

Source: Indian Express