Is The Law Catching On Them?

My grandfather used to tell me many stories when I was a small kid. You know, a part of that ‘inculcate good values in your children’ act that our parents and grandparents do through stories, poems and real life instances? The gist of all those stories was – one needs to pay for his/her sins, right here on earth. If at all he/she doesn’t pay it up, he/she might have to pay for it in heaven or hell, depending on where he/she makes the journey after death. None of us are quite sure about hell, heaven or that reincarnation nonsense but what we all are sure and believe in is ‘Karma’. Karma is something which balances out itself at the end of the day like a stock market and each one of us has to pay the remaining amount for our accounts to be settled. Well, this is what lord Krishna even suggested in Bhagwat Gita. Look at a certain Sanjay Dutt. Finally his sins and crimes overtook him and the so called mega star of Bollywood is paying for it. I am sure Salman Khan, though the witnesses are turning hostile for the time being, would pay for his crimes one day. Karma, you see is a bitch. It never leaves you before settling the account.

So in the same venire, is the Karma catching on Rahul and Sonia Gandhi finally?

Here is a little backdrop. There was a very lesser known newspaper called ‘National Herald’. The mother company ‘Associate Journals Ltd (AJL)’, which was publishing this daily, along with a Hindi and Urdu daily as well went busted in 2008. Their financial earnings plummeted to all time low and they literally went bankrupt one fine morning. All of a sudden they stopped publishing and declared their standings on various newspapers through their designated chartered accountants. Point to be noted here that the AJL was a listed company in our stock exchanges, which means, along with its core promoters, there were and are lakhs of other investors in the form of shares, debentures and bonds. So AJL going down the drains means it also took crores of public money, which could easily be hard earned money of innocent investors, along with it. But to surprise all, neither SEBI nor did the enforcement directorate or our finance ministry did any kind of investigation or due diligence when NH vanished all of a sudden. But why the watchdogs remained silent that time is coming to light after good six years. In a recent court order, metropolitan magistrate Gomati Monocha summoned Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi to appear before the court on August 7 to defend themselves against a petition filed by Subramaniam Swamy before the court on the issue of AJL and National Herald. The said petition accuses the mother-son duo of large scale misappropriation and financial fraud amounting to criminal conspiracy, thereby depriving the investors any return in their legitimate hard earned money.

Now one wonders – how these Gandhis are related to AJL and NH? Well I am not too surprised at all. Where ever there is a scam or money laundering in India, there one would find one Gandhi or the other in the plot. No, these are not just rhetoric of mine. It is just that, this time around there are ample proofs to nail this mother-son duo in AJL-NH mess or else, I am sure all scams in India has a handsome contribution of these Chinese Gandhis somewhere. Anyway, moving forward. When AJL went bankrupt, they went out in the market to find a suitable buyer. There came the ‘Young Indian’, a registered company under the companies act, 1956. The said company usurped the entire AJL and their debts by paying up a meager Rs. 50 Lakhs in one go. Now here comes the scam. The said ‘Young Indian’ organization was formed in 2010 with Rahul and Sonia Gandhi having a stupendous 76% share in it. The rest 24% is with the close confidants of Gandhi family. And to make it more interesting, the only activity that this YI has ever done, financial or otherwise is the takeover of AJL. One more thing. In today’s age of technology, this YI doesn’t have its own website till date (at least I haven’t seen or found) and there is no designated chartered accountant (not at least that I know) for routine auditing of its account books. In all manners, the formation of YI largely looks like a hush-up job to do the takeover of AJL by paying peanuts and be done away with later. Now you may ask, why one would form a company and then pay 50 Lakhs for a takeover and do nothing after. The answer to which lies with the massive real estate that AJL has in places like Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow, Panchkula, Indore to name few. The estimated real estate capital of AJL is somewhere in between 2000 to 2200 crores. So in one masterstroke, YI acquired a vast real estate by paying just 50 Lakhs. Does it sound similar to how Robert Vadra made crores on the lands that he bought by paying in few lakhs? Keep in mind that AJL is a listed company and any loss to its investors must be compensated by selling these real estates in the case of unfortunate eventualities. But that never happened. Nor did the watchdogs take any steps to safeguard the interest of the investors for obvious reasons. From nowhere YI came and gulped down everything that were of the shareholders and no one bothered to ask how and why.  

But the National Herald case is nothing new. It is in the public domain even before Dr. Swami filed the petition. In an old blog of mine, written three years back, I had raised the issue of NH and the suspicious involvement of Sonia and Rahul. During the same time, in a letter of correspondence, the YI has this to reply to a mail query of ‘The Pioneer’ on whether YI going to re-launch the defunct NH anytime soon.

Young Indian is a company registered and holding a license granted under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956. As a Section 25 company, Young Indian is a not-for-profit company and does not have commercial operations. The activities of the company are in the public domain. Anyone who chooses to can inspect the Objects of the Company. The company has no intention of starting any newspaper

This explicit mail from Rahul Gandhi’s office exposes much more than what it tries to hide. The self-admission suggests that YI is a non-profit organization with no intention of having any commercial affair. Then the question arises; from where YI got that 50 Lakhs to pay up for the takeover? Can the YI management furnish their account books to justify the source of this amount? If the money has come from the Congress party coffers then there is a financial violation right there. Congress as a political party earns hundreds of crores of money as non-taxable transients under the guise of donations. The party doesn’t have any authority to lend out unsolicited loans to any other party under the current norms. So, at large, the takeover smells like a dirty attempt at huge land grabbing by fraudulent means and amounts to massive cheating of the shareholders of the erstwhile AJL. Thankfully, Robert Vadra has still not come to the picture or else, Vadra-Land Grab-AJL-YI-Congress-RG-SG equation would have become self-explanatory. Not that, it is not exposed beyond doubts in the present form but a certain Vadra loitering around the scene would have been more interesting.

Even the statement of the honorable court while passing the orders speaks a lot about the prima facie involvement of the Gandhi family members in fraud and dishonesty. The dictate of the court suggests there is something horribly wrong in the whole AJL-YI deal and the matter needs to be investigated by no lesser than the finance ministry to bring the frauds to book. Below is the snippet of the court order that needs no Nobel laureate’s intellect to understand.

Complainant has established a prima facie case against the accused under section 403 (dishonest misappropriation of property, 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) read with section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC... Hence, let the accused Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Moti Lal Vohra, Oscar Fernandes, Suman Dubey and Sam Pitroda be summoned for August 7, 2014. Let the Young Indian be summoned through it's authorised representative for the same date

Anyone having slightest knowledge of our laws must realize that the charges are quite serious in nature. Most of them amount to criminal conspiracies. But the sidekicks of Congress like AbhiSEX Manu Singhvi and Maniac Tewari hold entirely different views. For them, it still is a conspiracy of the Swamies of the world to malign the pious Gandhis yet again. By the way, does anyone notice the usual suspects mentioned in the court order? All are Gandhi family loyalists with missing exceptions like Digvijay Singh and Alcoholic Aiyer. The Gandhi family sidekicks are still shouting in utter disdain that that they will counter the charges with ferocious replies. I am not sure what these dirty trick masters are having up their sleeves but from the look of it, the situation looks real grim for the mother-son duo.

But the worry for me is why the courts are acting now? What were they doing for last four years? It gives me jitters to imagine that even our judiciary was subverted during the regrettable tenure of UPA’s 10 year so that the frauds can get away easily without being punished; or at least be answerable. I am not saying the frauds here are punished already. I know, it still is a summon only and there is a long legal road ahead to bring these seasoned frauds to task. But at least we took the first steps to resurrect the missing credibility with our judiciary when it comes to punishing the rich and the powerful. Hope the culprits will get their long pending dues sooner than later.

By the way, if anyone can find the website URL of ‘Young India’, please do share with me. One more thing. Who will be defending the duo in courts? Congress party or the Italian Government? Because both of them still hold Italian passport and technically they are citizens of Italy. So Italian embassy jumping in to save their citizens can't be ruled out. Have a nice weekend and Ciao.