Commentary/T V R Shenoy

The urea scamsters put Zardari to shame.
They weren't content with anything less than 100%.

Which is the worst government office in Delhi? Is it I K Gujral's eternally-appeasing foreign office, the dormant home ministry led by Comrade Indrajit Gupta, or Joginder Singh's CBI?

The competition is intense, and each has received its share of richly-deserved abuse. So isn't it surprising that one of them insists on keeping absolute silence over a real achievement?

On January 3, 1997, Joginder Singh's men found Rs 4.05 million -- allegedly part of the loot from the Rs 1.33 billion urea scam. All of it was, I believe, in the form of crisp, new Rs 500 notes. And all of it was found in a sealed locker in Hyderabad.

Yet neither the CBI nor the Enforcement Directorate want to give any publicity to the fact. And therein lies a story.

During his short tenure as prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee put the urea scam investigation on a firm basis. This forced the CBI to wake up. The investigators found that part of the stolen money had returned to India, and was deposited in a bank locker.

At this point, the Vajpayee ministry was unseated. The then CBI director, Vijaya Rama Rao, promptly ordered his officers to seal the locker without opening it. Joginder Singh, his successor, saw no reason to unseal it. And all this at a time when CBI officers were flying all over the world in search of clues!

But the CBI wasn't the only body after the money. P Chidambaram's Enforcement Directorate too was on the scent. These sleuths found that the locker had remained sealed for close to five months. They reported back to Delhi. But the finance minister chose not to interfere.

On November 19, 1996, the CBI began to stir. (Significantly, the winter session of Parliament was about to open.) To keep the cover-up going yet still give an impression of action, the CBI hit upon a legalistic defence.

They served a notice on A V R Krishnamoorthy. (Krishnamoorthy was once one of the most powerful men in India as officer on special duty in the PMO in the Rao regime.) Krishnamoorthy denied ownership. Joginder Singh's men went back to sleep.

The truth is finally out. The locker belongs to A V R Krishnamoorthy's son, Anand (who allegedly played a role in getting complicated hawala transactions).

Several questions must be asked? Why did the CBI take seven months to open the locker? (Two months after the Enforcement Directorate asked it to do so!)

The CBI is hiding behind the stale excuse of ownership. This is nonsense. Let us remember what Joginder Singh himself said after raiding Sukh Ram's residences.

The director cheerfully stated that sealed lockers and safes could be opened even in Sukh Ram's absence, with permission from the court if necessary. Yet in the case of the locker in Hyderabad, there was no talk of obtaining judicial sanction.

To return to the Sukh Ram case, the CBI found over Rs 36.5 million in his residences. Only a fraction of that -- less than Rs 500,000 rupees -- was found in the lockers. The ratio is over 1:70.

This makes sense. No crook is going to keep the bulk of his funds in a locker that can be searched at any time. He will prefer to keep most of the loot with him.

In Sukh Ram's case the strategy didn't work because the raid was conducted in some secrecy. Here, the owner of the locker was given a full seven months notice that he was being investigated!

Let us assume that the 1:70 ratio kept by Sukh Ram was the standard adopted by the last Congress regime. In this case, then, Rs 4 million in the bank is worth Rs 280 million at home.

Harshad Mehta proved Rs 10 million can be stuffed into one suitcase. I am sure 28 suitcases can be transported to a new hiding place, given seven months. (Along with documents?)

Of course, that figure of Rs 280 million is purely an estimate. It could be less. Or it could be much more -- remember that the total amount stolen in the urea scam was a massive Rs 1.33 billion.

Remember too that the urea scam is unique in many ways. Unlike Bofors all the money was looted, not just part of it. Second, no agents like Win Chadha were involved, only officers in the Prime Minister's Office and members of the Rao clan.

Asif Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's husband, was nicknamed 'Mr 10%' for his corrupt activities. The urea scamsters put him to shame. They weren't content with anything less than 100%.

But nobody seems to care even now. In fact, both the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate are keeping unusually low profiles.

When Sukh Ram was raided, the CBI director took camera crews on a guided tour of the Congressman's palatial mansion. When Jayalalitha was raided, pictures of her wealth were splashed on television and every newspaper within 24 hours. Why is Anand Krishnamoorthy being treated with such respect?

Was it fear of Narasimha Rao that accounts for the seven month gap between finding the locker and opening it? If so, the grace period may be at the end.

Notice the significance of January 3, 1997 when the locker was opened. It is the same day that Sitaram Kesri took over as CPP leader from Narasimha Rao!