* “Two years ago I sent her an attaché full of Rupees three lakh fifty thousand in cash. What to talk of accounts, she has not even bothered to return the attaché case.” That was S.K. Patil, the longest serving treasurer of the Congress, at the time of the 1969 split in the party. The “she” he was referring to was none other than Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
* In the early 1950s, having failed to deliver on his promise to hang every black marketer from the nearest lamppost, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru now talked of banishing black money from politics until a Kanpur moneybag brought him down to terra firma: “Jawaharlal, tum kaya sochtey ho key Vijayalakshmi Pandit (Nehru’s sister, in case you did not know) hawai jahaj mein apne paise per udti hain? Uski Bombay ki ticket maine abhi karbai. Aur Rs 25,000 cash bhi diye kharche key liey (Jawaharlal, do you believe that Vijayalakshmi buys air tickets with her own money? I got her Bombay ticket done just now and gave her Rs 25,000 for expenses.)” Panditji’s ardour to fight black money was suitably diminished.
* Years earlier, Mahatma Gandhi was so disgusted with the corruption of Congress ministers in the provincial governments formed after the 1937 election that he threatened to quit the Congress. He was persuaded not to do so on the ground that his quitting would undermine the freedom movement.
What are we driving at? Simple. Politics and black money are inseparable twins. Though ordinary people contributed voluntarily to the freedom movement, yet it was the moneybags who actually bankrolled the Congress. One reason why they did not donate through cheques was the fear of the colonial masters.
Why, the seven-star life of luxury that the Nehru-Gandhis have lived all along without there being any ostensible means of legitimate income can only be explained by the generosity of anonymous donors. Extended foreign education, even if it did not result in actual degrees or even real education, could not have come cheap. Or the frequent foreign sojourns for various members of the family.
Therefore, Rahul Gandhi’s belated attempt to throw the 2013 diary at Narendra Modi is unlikely to find its target. Even if you were to lend credence to those entries, there is not a soul in the BJP or outside which really believes that the Prime Minister diverted a paisa from those funds into his own pocket. (Meanwhile, Rahul should be concerned if a number of leaders who figure in those diaries did not deposit the money in the party account, which, one has it on good authority, they did not.) Meanwhile, one of the diaries was a complete sham, prepared with an eye on the impending income tax raids.
Notably, the fact that of nearly Rs 3,500 crore that the Congress officially collected in the decade it was in power between 2004-14, over 80% was from unknown sources as per the return filed by it with the Income-Tax Department. Likewise, the BJP too filed a return of a little under Rs 3,000 crore for the same decade and nearly 80% of the amount was from unnamed donors.
Nobody, just nobody, who is in the electoral game can do without black money. Remember how some in the AAP allegedly used hawala channels to convert black money into white in order to brag that it only deals in licit cash. Also, the fact that the AAP website listing the donors has been “under construction” for several months only underlines the cold fact that regardless of the pretensions of Kejriwal the AAP may be no different from any other party.
Meanwhile, the Election Commission’s grievance is that there are more than 2,000 parties registered with it merits attention. Maybe the registration process needs to be more stringent, though care needs to be taken not to deny public-spirited citizens a chance to offer a better alternative to the voters.
However, the current focus on these postbox entities would have better served the public purpose if the state of their finances was disclosed. Given that a number of such fly-by-night parties are registered only to launder money, the relevant authorities ought to have disclosed the total donations held and/or disbursed by them.
HOW A HAWALA DEALER CAME TO GRIEF
The Kolkata hawala dealer, Paras Mal Lodha, arrested under the stringent Prevention of Money Laundering Act, missed an opportunity to stay out of trouble when he was first raided by the Enforcement Directorate in early September. They found keys of a couple of lockers which threw up jewellery, gems and other precious trinkets worth over Rs 250 crore. But the raid did not deter Lodha from being Lodha. Besides, demonetisation offered once-in-a-life opportunity to make a killing.
He had first shot into prominence when using the services of a journalist he virtually became the financier of a key minister in the short-lived V.P. Singh government. Sometime later, Lodha made a well-publicised but eventually failed bid to take over the country’s best known chit fund headquartered in Kolkata.
Soon he ventured into “fixing” judges. Having bought rights to a well-located multi-storied building in Mumbai, Lodha relied on the services of a senior High Court judge to sanction the extra FSI. The said judge was paid in excess of over Rs 40 lakh, ostensibly as royalty for two long pamphlet-like tracts Lodha had got printed to justify the payments. Money was remitted to the judge’s bank account in foreign currency. Thanks to the leakage of the Lodha nexus, the said, and we might add, honourable judge had to quit.
Sometime later another scandal came to light when bundles of currency notes were found in the toilet of the Bombay High Court. The hand of Lodha was widely suspected. He is widely known to lend his services to fix legal issues at a hefty price.
For several years now, Lodha had been the key receiver-cum-launderer of bribes for powerful people in a southern government. Cash would be delivered to him in Kolkata, which he would convert into white at a hefty commission and then remit it back to designated parties in the state on receipt of coded messages from a key aide of the CM. In the process, a number of bureaucrats too came to rely on Lodha’s services.
However, the well-organised racket which Lodha had carried on for decades was exposed when in a moment of hubris the little known Delhi lawyer Rohit Tandon bought the Ruias’ Jor Bagh bungalow for over Rs 100 crore. The purchase made him a target, with lawyers far more successful than him asking “Rohit who?”, while taxmen sought to figure out the source of his funds.
Meanwhile, the arrest of Lodha last Tuesday night while he was ready to board the Malaysian Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur after clearing immigration and other formalities would suggest that he is set to spend a long time in jail. At long last, Lodha is facing justice in the Modi Age.