Scorpene Deal Scam

The Scorpene Submarine Deal Scam is one of India's largest bribery corruption scandals, in which Rs. 500 crore (about USD 10 mn) were allegedly paid to government decision makers by Thales, the makers of the Scorpene submarine. The amount was channeled via middlemen such as Abhishek Verma. Also involved was Ravi Shankaran, a relative of the then chief of navy staff Arun Prakash. He is the prime accused in the Navy War Room spy scandal.

In October 2005, defence minister Pranab Mukherjee approved the Rs 19,000 crore submarine deal with French company Thales. Scorpene submarines are now being built in India under a technology transfer agreement that was part of that contract. The Scorpene Submarine Scandal was yet another scam involved in a multi billion dollar military hardware purchase.

HUDCO Scam, The CIC Report

The HUDCO Scam siphoned crores of rupees as loan. Investigations revealed that there was bribes paid to officials to get these loans meant for upliftment of the poor. The Right to Information Act helped to unveil the mystery behind the Central Vigilance Commission proposing and the CBI disposing in the Rs1,300-crore HUDCO scam. Showing signs of a nexus within the affluents within the government body.

The Central Information Commission directed the CBI to provide the inquiry report on closing investigation in fourcases where the CVC found "adequate evidence of paying bribes" to mobilise funds from Housing and Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO) in 2006. The Central Bureau of Investigation had closed the case saying there was not enough evidence to proceed with the probe. This resulted in the housing and urban development ministry submitting a closure report in Supreme Court in 2007. The corporation had invested Rs. 950 crore in West Bengal Infrastructure Development Finance, Rs. 200 crore in Himachal Pradesh Infrastructure Development Board and Rs. 150 crore in Vidharbha Irrigation Development Corporation.

There were allegations that money was paid to get these funds from HUDCO. “It appears that CVC found clear evidence showing bribes were taken. However, the CBI and the (Housing and Urban Development) ministry have come to the conclusion there is no wrong doing. If corruption is to be curtailed.... citizens need to get information of this nature," Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi said.

The CBI's information officer Pradeep Kumar had refused to provide information to RTI applicant AN Gupta on the ground that the probe report was confidential. The investigations were closed in 2007 and that SC was informed about it. Gandhi said the information officer had wrongly applied the exemption clauses and said "mere fears without any justification" could not be grounds for denying the citizen's fundamental right. The commission also said the Kumar had failed to justify the reasons for denying information as stipulated under the RTI Act.

Cobbler Scam - $600 million shoes scam India

India being a large country and blessed with varied natural and cultural diversity is also blessed with a lesser desired blessing, called Scams. A lot of scams are discovered in India every now and then, as if its a day to day routine and like the corruptions in India can never come to an end. If one corruption is exposed another one start somewhere. This also reminds me one of the biggest multi million dollars scam in Indian History which was nicknamed The Great Cobbler Scam.

What really happened in this Great Cobbler Scam was that various businessman & politicians had siphoned around $600 million US dollars from a scheme that was floated by the Government of India meant to benefit the poor cobblers of Mumbai. Instead, it went into the pockets of wealthy elite and bureaucrats who used this money to built luxury homes for themselves and also brought luxury cars, boats, arts...etc. Pretty common use of Tax Payers money.

The money of the scheme to benefit the poor cobblers in Mumbai, was meant to provide low interest loans and tax concessions to the Mumbai's poorest - cobblers who work 16-hours a day for less than $2. Not a single penny of the scheme from the government of India reached these poor cobblers of Mumbai, Maharashtra.

The modus operandi of the masterminds of the cobbler scam was to float a cooperative society of cobblers to avail the soft government loans through various schemes. Several bogus societies of cobblers were formed only for the purpose of availing these soft government loans for the poor cobblers.

The people involved in this racket were Saddrudin Daya, former sheriff of Mumbai and owner of Dawood Shoes, Rafique Tejani, owner of Metro Shoes, Kishore Signapurkar, proprietor of Milano Shoes, and Abu Asim Azmi, president of Samajwadi Party's Mumbai unit and partner in Citywalk Shoes. Beside them various officials of banks and financial institutions were also involved in this multi million dollars Cobbler Scam.

The Banks whose officials were involved in this scam are : Maharashtra State Finance Corporation, Citibank, Bank of Oman, Dena Bank, Development Credit Bank, Saraswat Co-operative Bank, and Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait. All were booked for economic fraud.

This scam costed the Government of India around $600 million US dollars. The cobbler scam was one of the worst scam in India that cheated the poorest people of the society and benefited a lot of rich and elite. Such Scams are one of the cause that proverty in India is difficult to eliminate.

Hawala Money Laundering Scam

The Hawala Money Laundering Scam hovered around the fact that the Hawala channels through which terrorist outfits in Kashmir like Hijbul-Mujahideen used to get funds, the same channels used to grease the palms of over 115 top bureaucrats and politicians of the country. CBI, RAW and every other investigative agencies of the country suppressed the entire Hawala case. 

Indian government accuses Pakistan for encouraging dreaded militant outfit Hijbul-Mujahideen to spread terrorism in India, but why does it not want to investigate the Jain Hawala case, which is directly connected with the funding of the Hijbul-Mujahideen ? It is the same organization which has been behind maximum terrorist attacks and has also caused the Kargil war that took the toll of hundreds of our young officers and soldiers.

The Video is a compilation of a Crusade of one Man Vineet Narain, who exposed the hawala case.

Click the link to know more about Hawala.

Barak Missile Purchase Scam Defense

The Barak missile system was jointly developed by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and RAFAEL Armament Development Authority of Israel.

On 23 October 2000, contracts had been signed by the Indian government to procure seven Barak systems at a total cost $199.50 million and 200 missiles at a cost of $69.13 million. This was done despite objections raised by several groups, including members of the team that had originally visited Israel to observe the missile performance, and APJ Abdul Kalam, then heading the Defence Research Development Organization. Though some of the objections were of a procedural nature, the Navy Chief of Staff Sushil Kumar is currently under investigation as to why these objections were not considered.

In 2001 a sting operation conducted by Tehelka alleged that 15 defence deals made by the government had involved some sort of kickback and the Barak missile deal was one of them. Transcripts of conversations between the undercover Tehelka operative and R. K. Jain indicate that Jain accepted bribes from Suresh Nanda in the amount of one crore.

The NDA government set up a commission to investigate the matter. The UPA government, rejected the partial report by the commission and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began investigating the case.

The Central Bureau of Investigation lodged an First Information Report (FIR) on 9 October 2006 and claimed that George Fernandes the Indian defense minister at that time, and the Former Chief of the Indian Navy, Admiral Sushil Kumar were involved. The FIR notes that the Indian Defence Research & Development Organization had sought to block the import of the Barak system right until the end. The FIR restates R.K. Jain's admission to Tehelka that 3 per cent of this cost went to Fernandes and Jaya Jaitley as commission, while he himself was given 0.5 per cent. These commissions were paid to them by Suresh Nanda, the middleman in the deal, according to the Tehelka tapes.

Suresh Nanda, his son Sanjeev Nanda, and two others were arrested on the 9 March 2008 under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and section 201 (committing offense to cause disappearing of evidence) related to the scandal.

Sukh Ram telecom scam

He himself would have never thought that a bribe of Rs. 3 Lakhs could land him into trouble after 15 years. Special Judge RP Pandey, convicted 84-year-old Sukhram on charges of misusing his official position in awarding the contract and causing loss to the state exchequer, is likely to decide on quantum of sentence to him on Saturday.

The corruption case dates back to year 1996, when the telecom ministry was under Sukhram. Sukhram had awarded private firm Haryana Telecom Limited (HTL) a contract worth Rs 30 crore to supply 3.5 Lakh Conductor Kilometers (LCKM) of Polythene Insulated Jelly Filled (PIJF) cables to the telecom department.
Sukhram had been put on trial along with HTL chairman Devinder Singh Choudhary who died during the trial.
 
"Sukhram also obtained (illegal) gratification other than legal remunerations from Choudhary as a motive or reward for showing the favour to the said firm (HTL)," the judge said.

"It is not the prosecution case that Sukhram got only this much amount in this deal which runs into crores of rupees. The prosecution case is that the amount of Rs 3 lakh which was recovered from him was the bribe money.

"It is a matter of common knowledge that it is virtually impossible to get any direct evidence where both i.e bribe giver and the person who takes the bribe, worked in joint concert," ASJ Pandey said in his 188-page order.

Harshad Mehta Stock Market Scam

Harshad Shantilal Mehta was born in a modest Gujarati family. He was alleged to have engineered the rise of the BSE in 1992 by exploiting several loopholes in the country's banking system.

Harshad Mehta and his associates siphoned off funds from inter-bank transactions and bought shares in huge numbers at a premium across different segments, triggering a false rise in the Sensex.

When the scheme was exposed, banks started demanding their money back, causing the Bombay stock market to collapse. He was later charged with 72 criminal offenses and more than 600 civil action suits were filed against him.

In April 1992, press reports indicated that there was a shortfall in the govt securities held by the State Bank of India (SBI). In about a months time investigations uncovered the securities scam involving misappropriation of funds to the tune of Rs.3,500 crore.

The scam engulfed top executives of large nationalized banks, foreign banks, financial institutions, brokers, bureaucrats & politicians. In less than two months following the scam, the stock prices dropped by over 40%, wiping out market value to the tune of a whopping Rs.100,000 crore.

He took the price of ACC from 200 to 9000. That was an increase of 4400%!!!

The market went up like crazy and the bulls were on a mad run. Since he had to book profits in the end, the day he sold was the day when the market crashed. One lesser known fact about this scam is that there was a very important player in this scam who managed to keep a very low profile. That man was Nimesh Shah. He was just as involved as Harshad Mehta but he knew how keep out of the hands of the law. Nimesh Shah still deals in the stock market and is known to be a heavy player. Harshad Mehta is now dead. It is rumored that when he died, he still had 10% of ACC shares with him.

Reference : http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/big-bull-harshad-mehta-pays-dues-9-years-after-death/1/132637.htm

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/big-bull-harshad-mehta-pays-dues-9-years-after-death/1/132637.html