2G Scam: Beneficiaries of the scam which was not there

The following are some of the prime beneficiaries of the 2G Scam propaganda. The 2G Scam case was described by CBI Court's Special Judge O.P. Saini as a scam, that was not there.

• Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India since 2014.
  He was the then BJP CM of Gujarat. His mainstay in 2014 election campaign was anti-corruption and leaned heavily on 2G Scam and Coalgate, among many others scams and reaped rich dividend.
• Arvind Kejriwal, Chief Minister of Delhi since 2015.
  He was Joint Commissioner, Income Tax, New Delhi till 2006
• Kiran Bedi, Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry
  She resigned from IPS in 2007, after she was denied Delhi Police Commissioner, two years ahead of her retirement. She was BJP's CM candidate in 2015 Delhi elections but lost to AAP. In 2016, she was appointed as the LG of Puducherry.
• Vinod Rai, CAG (2008-13)
  Today he holds (i) BCCI Administrator (ii) Special Auditor for financial irregularities in Padmanabhaswamy Temple, Trivandrum (iii) First Chairman of the Banks Board Bureau, which will advise the government on top-level PSU bank appointments etc.
• Arnab Goswami, then Times Now TV's news anchor.
  Today he is Managing Director, Editor-in-Chief and Co-founder of Republic TV. Other co-founders are his wife Samyabrata Ray and Rajeev Chandrasekhar, BJP MP.

In Dec 2017, Special Judge O.P. Saini said the CBI and the ED had failed to provide sufficient evidence to prove the charges against 33 persons named in the case that contributed to the Congress-led UPA' electoral loss in 2014. The judge stated that the charge sheet is based mainly on misreading, selective reading, non-reading and out of the context reading of official records while there is no evidence on the record produced before the court indicating any criminality in the acts allegedly committed by the accused persons etc. 

There is no question that corruption existed while doling out 2G licenses then. Nothing has happened on merit, in any capital, without kickbacks since 50 years. Without substantial evidence talking about this corruption leads us to nowhere. It is mere waste of time and energy. The fact that Modi and his CBI has not even filed appeal in higher court on this judgment, even after 4/5 months, indicates acceptance of Special Judge O.P. Saini's scathing remarks while dismissing the case.

Modi runs away from 'No confidence motion'

TDP's and YSRCP's individual no-confidence moves failed to take off on March 19, 2018, for the second time due to disorderly house created by AIADMK and TRS MP's rushing into well and shouting for their unimportant pending demands and creating feeble ruckus. The house was adjourned within minutes strangely for next day, giving rise to the suspicion that AIADMK & TRS protest in Lok Sabha was "stage-managed" by BJP. Despite sweeping powers, the Speaker has not made any attempt to restore order in the House for taking up the important motion of no-confidence and just adjourned the house for the day saying, "I'm duty-bound to bring the no-confidence motion. But I cannot do so that unless the House is in order". Orderly running of the house is the responsibility of Speaker, PM and Parliamentary affairs minister. 

Ever since Modi became PM, discussion on important matters was always thwarted by BJP and questions were never answered straight forward. The recent passage of Finance Bill with 28 amendments in less than 30 minutes amidst pandemonium is a glaring example.

Why BJP is hiding from a no-confidence motion despite having sufficient numbers?

• There is considerable disillusion in BJP arising out of recent LS bye poll defeats in Rajasthan, MP, WB, Bihar and UP with huge margins. It is surprising to note that BJP leaders are the most happiest persons for BJP's debacle in bye polls in North.
• BJP is scared of its own MP may not be present in LS at the time of voting. 
• The entire opposition became united, on AP issues, for the first time in the past 4 years.
• Debates during 'no confidence motion' are unconstrained and will provide great opportunity for all opposition parties to ventilate their grievances on any matter and charge that ruling BJP has nos not done much for many other states. Also all his failures during past 4 years will getting highlighted during the debate.
• Any discussion that allows for scathing criticism in an election year is something the government wants to avoid. This negative publicity is likely to impact BJP's chances, if any, in the forth coming Karnataka elections. The bank frauds can no longer be dismissed as a creation of the UPA as these fraudsters left the country under the Modi dispensation. Above all, Modi doesn't like or he hates criticism and has no attitude to answer questions straight forward.
• The exit of TDP from NDA has already dented BJP's credibility in accommodating its allies. The TDP's no-confidence motion has put an end to the "myth" that the BJP-led Modi government has an unshakable mandate for the next 25 years, as said by Shiv Sena. Shiv Sena's allegation that The TDP's no-confidence motion is for its political reasons and not for any 'nationalist' reason holds no water since TDP is a regional party only. 
• But TDP has no choice since BJP has not fulfilled its 19+ obligations in implementing AP Reorganization Act 2014 even in its last year of the 5 year mandate, which is unpardonable. Needless to say 5 crore AP people are unanimously angry over BJP's attitude of highhandedness and TDP exiting NDA and tabling no confidence motion made Naidu a hero. Public perception can't be ignored in a democracy especially when they are not demanding the sky.
• Even though YSRCP announced no confidence motion a month ago, none took it seriously with their integrity and corrupt background with YS Jagan as A1 in a dozen cases and his properties worth several thousand crores attached by ED so far. The talk in AP is that YSRCP is cooperating with BJP secretly to get out of cases and silently getting its properties out of ED's attachment. With these its mass base is fast shrinking.
• The manner in which BJP has formed governments recently in Goa, Meghalaya and Nagaland without explicit majority or even highest seats denying Congress with highest seats opportunity to form coalition government indicates their utter disrespect for democratic norms and constitution.
• BJP will certainly defend itself even attack opposition invoking irrelevant historical pasts etc. but opposition will have more ammunition to fire at BJP.

BJP must be regretting now that it could have done something on its own (of about 20% as per AP Reorganization Act 2014) for funds starving AP in this last Budget 2018 so that this embarrassment would have been avoided. Modi is paying very big price for his highhandedness and headstrong attitude. Modi successfully added another negative item to BJP's already 'worst performer' account.

With what ever is happening during the past 10 days, Modi & Jaitley with their arrogance belittled themselves as reflected by unity among almost all opposition parties, Chandrababu Naidu became hero of Telugu Pride and BJP got buried underground worse than that of Congress party in 2014. With BJP and Congress seen as AP cheaters and Jagan (YSRCP) seen in collusion with BJP & Modi, TDP is assured landslide victory in 2019 general elections in AP.

How cronyism dictates Modi’s India

Gautam Adani & Narendra Modi

• Strategic litigations are being used by big corporates to curb free speech and discourage high-quality investigative journalism.
• While Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that there’s not a single stain of corruption on his three-year tenure in the Centre, a barrage of attacks on media, creeping self-censorship and a belligerent government clamping down on those trying to do their job well and ask critical, uncomfortable questions about the state of the political economy.
• With 58% of India’s wealth owned by the top 1% of population, crony capitalism is thriving and under this government's regime. Despite PM Modi’s hard talk against corruption and claims of ending it altogether, there exists a concerted attempt to delete every mention of such collusions.
• The "collusions" of the alleged Modi-Adani nexus, whether in terms of bending of rules pertaining to special economic zones as to benefit the Adani Group per se, or helping the businessman deal with black money, give him undue loans from public sector banks on overseas projects that had run into troubles with local authorities there.
• It was SBI trying to extend a line of credit worth $ one billion to Adani Group for the Carmichael coal mining project in Australia, or helping the billionaire from Gujarat engage in "riskless capitalism" by tweaking SEZ rules, laying waste to India's environment, or saving Adani from green penalties, the collusion has been happening right before our eyes. 
• Of course, Gautam Adani* had reportedly poured money into Narendra Modi's Lok Sabha election campaign in 2013-14, making it the costliest ever in the history of India. The Gujarat-based businessman's proximity to the prime minister was flaunted in the politician flying all over India in Adani's private planes and choppers.
  *Adani is a college dropout, who spurned his father's textile shop to set up a commodities export firm in 1988. He survived the terrorist attack in Mumbai's Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in 2008.
• Adani Group allegedly took out over Rs 5,000 crore to tax havens abroad, using inflated bills for the import of power equipment from South Korea and China, and the SIT on black money was told by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
• Despite his anti-black money bluster, one of the biggest black money cases before the retired Supreme Court judge-led Special Investigation Team - a decision taken by PM Modi himself in the initial days of his taking office - has been that of the Adani Group of Industries. 
• What has happened to that investigation? No clue. Brutal clampdown on any mention of the alleged Modi-Adani nexus, strangling free press by using what in legal jargon has come to be known as a "SLAPP", or strategic litigation to avoid public participation.  
• Press freedom in India ranks at a dismal number 138.

Read the source article

Nirav Modi defrauds PNB of Rs.11,400 crores and flees away

Nirav Modi with PM Narendra Modi at Davos on 24-Jan-2018

Nirav Modi, who defrauded PNB by over Rs.11,000 crores

• Punjab National Bank (PNB) said on 14-Feb-2018 that it had been defrauded of about Rs 11,400 crores by jeweller Nirav Modi, his maternal uncle Mehul Chinubhai Choksi, and other relatives through a clutch of companies they own.
• Two of its employees were involved in the scam, where the bank’s core banking system was bypassed to raise payment notes to overseas branches of other Indian banks, including Allahabad Bank, Axis Bank, and Union Bank of India, using the international financial communication system, SWIFT.
• As the payment request was raised by PNB, and therefore, the payment would have to be met by the Delhi-based Punjab National Bank. PNB in a letter to banks, indicated clearly that it was in no mood to pay back and alleged connivance of employees at the foreign branches of other Indian banks. The banking system is heading towards a protracted legal battle as other banks will start suing PNB over non-payment of dues and refusal to honour commitments.
• An age-old method employed to defraud the banking system. It involved LoUs raised at the PNB’s Mumbai office by firms owned by Modi and his family. A LoU works like a bank guarantee, which the importer can sell to other banks at a discount. At the end, the bank that holds the LoU goes back to the issuer bank (PNB in this case) and gets its due. The issuer bank (PNB) recovers its due against the LoU from its client (Modi).
• However, issuance of the LoU involves a lot of process and to mitigate the risks of fraud, banks insist the client deposit an equivalent amount of assets, mainly cash, in the local branch, to avail of the overseas facility. Since LoU expires within a maximum of 180 days and fresh LoU needs to be issued. Since first LoU was issued to Nirav Modi in 2011, several fresh LoC's issuance could not have happened with political patronage and connivance of bank's top brass.
• PNB disclosed that it detected fraudulent and unauthorised transactions worth around $1.78 billion (approximately Rs 11,400 crores) “for the benefit of a few select account holders” with the help of the bank staff based in one of its Mumbai branches. “In the bank these transactions are contingent in nature and liability arising out of these on the bank shall be decided based on the law and genuineness of the underlying transactions,” the bank said.
• DFS Secretary Rajiv Kumar said this seemed to be an isolated case and would not impact other banks.
• Nirav Modi & his family are believed to have left the country several days before lodging of FIR by CBI and is believed to be in Switzerland.  
• An interesting reader's comment ...
  

  "You cannot fault Rajiv Kumar, for sure. He knows which side of the bread is buttered, and so, unsolicited, he jumps to the govt's defence by invoking 2011. But deafening silence from the FM, the RBI, the Finance Secretary -- not to mention the PM for whom, understandably, Rs 11k Crore is a measly little sum totally undeserving of his attention. He is busy doing what he does best: address election meetings where, other than subtly stoking communal fires, he speaks grandly of Vikash. Surely his Vikash model has stood Nirav Modi in good stead, and as far as the ordinary Indian citizen is concerned, our PM couldn't care less, as every Bharatiya happens to know by now. So the field is left open for the usual buffoonery of Ravishankar Prasad and a pugnacious (though completely witless) intervention by the Raksha Mantri. Nobody has apparently suggested to Nirmala Sitaraman that she had better take care of the country's porous borders -- which happen to be under her charge and are leaking all the while -- rather than talking about things she doesn't have the foggiest idea about. But, then, who will advise whom about what in the madhouse that Modi's India has turned into?"

SNAP SHOT

1. On 14 Feb 2018, the CBI received complaints from PNB, which detected a Rs 11,292 crore fraud involving jeweller Nirav Modi.
2. The number of suspended employees now stands at 18.
3. Nirav Modi’s home, offices in Mumbai, Delhi and Surat were raided by the ED on 15 Feb 2018.
4. The CBI and the ED have moved separate applications with the EAM, seeking the revocation of passports of Modi and his partner Choksi.
5. PNB suspended 10 officials from its Mumbai branch in connection with the case.
6. In two days, PNB lost over Rs 8,000 crore of market valuation.
7. The case turned political after the Congress termed Nirav ‘Chotta Modi’.
8. Officials said Modi and his family fled India in the first week of January, days before the first complaint was filed.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. 

All those experiments have a bad ending.

Read the source article

Gem of a scam - Business Standard

Every new government will be 'clean' during first 1-2 years. Their misdeeds will surface by end of 3rd year or later. BJP & Modi are no exception. Modi just followed the time tested corruption path established by Congress and even more reckless. Only narrative is different. The fact that more than 90% of political donations reached BJP coffers speaks volumes about quid pro quo's involved. While the Nirav Modi's scam occurred during past 1-2 years, BJP attempting to link it to Congress invoking 2011 is just nonsense. BJP may or may not be responsible for this scam, but the way they are responding leaves people of India without any doubts about their involvement. There is no way BJP or any political party will accept their wrong doings, the best - people of India can do is to defeat them in 2019 general elections. This may pave way to Congress regain power but we hardly have choice. In Indian political arena even a saint ascending to power will end up in corruption, cronyism, nepotism etc. Even in USA, no one ever retired from Presidency more respected by political friends and foes alike. Such is the power of power & money.

The State is back with a loud bang

 

 

Yashwant Sinha Indicts Arun Jaitley's 'Mess'

• I shall be failing in my national duty if I did not speak up even now against the mess the finance minister has made of the economy. I am also convinced that what I am going to say reflects the sentiments of a large number of people in the BJP and elsewhere who are not speaking up out of fear.
• Jaitley was, to begin with, a lucky finance minister, luckier than any in the post-liberalisation era. Depressed global crude oil prices placed at his disposal lakhs of crores of rupees. This unprecedented bonanza was waiting to be used imaginatively. The legacy problems like stalled projects and bank NPAs were no doubt there and should have been managed better like the crude oil bonanza. But the oil bonanza has been wasted and the legacy problems have not only been allowed to persist, they have become worse.
• So, what is the picture of the Indian economy today? Private investment has shrunk as never before in two decades, industrial production has all but collapsed, agriculture is in distress, construction industry, a big employer of the work force, is in the doldrums, the rest of the service sector is also in the slow lane, exports have dwindled, sector after sector of the economy is in distress, demonetisation has proved to be an unmitigated economic disaster, a badly conceived and poorly implemented GST has played havoc with businesses and sunk many of them and countless millions have lost their jobs with hardly any new opportunities coming the way of the new entrants to the labour market. 
• For quarter after quarter, the growth rate of the economy has been declining until it reached the low of 5.7% in the first quarter of the current fiscal, the lowest in three years. The deceleration had started much earlier. Demonetisation only added fuel to fire.  According to the old method of calculation, the growth rate of 5.7%  is actually 3.7% or less.
• SBI chairman stated that the telecom sector is the latest entrant to the long list of stressed sectors.
• The reasons for this decline have been allowed to accumulate over time to cause the present crisis. It was not difficult to take counter measures to deal with them that called for devoting time to the task, serious application of mind, understanding of the issues and then working out a game plan to tackle them. It was perhaps too much to expect from a person (FM) who was carrying the heavy burden (Defence, Divestment & Corporate Affairs) of so many extra responsibilities. The results are there for all of us to see.
• The only new thing is the reconstituted Economic Advisory Council of the prime minister. Like the five Pandavas they are expected to win the new Mahabharat war for us.
• Forty leading companies of the country are already facing bankruptcy proceedings. Many more are likely to follow suit. The SME sector is suffering from an unprecedented existential crisis.
• The input tax credit demand under the GST is a whopping Rs 65,000 crore against a collection of Rs 95,000 crore. The government has asked the income tax department to chase those who have made large claims. 
• We protested against raid raj when we were in opposition. Today it has become the order of the day. Post demonetisation, the income tax department has been charged with the responsibility of investigating lakhs of cases involving the fate of millions of people. The ED and the CBI also have their plates full. Instilling fear in the minds of the people is the name of the new game.
• Economies are destroyed more easily than they are built. It took almost four years of painstaking and hard work in the late nineties and early 2000 to revive a sagging economy we had inherited in 1998. Nobody has a magic wand to revive the economy overnight. Steps taken now will take their own time to produce results. So, a revival by the time of the next Lok Sabha election appears highly unlikely. A hard landing appears inevitable. 
• Bluff and bluster is fine for the hustings, it evaporates in the face of reality. 
• The prime minister claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister is working over-time to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters.
• P Chidambaram said that Congress is happy that Yashwant Sinha has echoed their criticisms of the government. He also tweeted "Yashwant Sinha speaks Truth to Power. Will Power now admit the Truth that economy is sinking?"

Everyone in the country knows our economy is distressed and in deep trouble due to foolish acts of our PM & FM. Some speaks and many (BJP/Modi bhakts) won't. After inflicting irreparable damages, what is the point in appointing 5 member Prime Minister Economic Advisory Council or working out on a meager Rs.50,000 crores stimulus package or announcing Rs.16,000 crore free electricity for all by end of 2018 benefiting 4 crore poor people. Any change in economic direction will take few to several years and nothing much can be expected before 2019 elections. Destroying the institutions like Planning Commission etc have had its effect for this directionless economy. Unless Modi learns to respect experts and take their advice - discarding the habits of consulting quacks and astrologers, India has no future. Alternately, people of India may find Modi's substitute in 2019 and they will.