Bihar Fodder Scam Lalu Yadav

The Bihar Cattle Fodder Scam involved the alleged embezzlement of about Rs 950 crore from the government treasury of Bihar, India. The alleged theft spanned over many years, was engaged in by many Bihar state government administrative and elected officials across multiple administrations, and involved the fabrication of "vast herds of fictitious livestock" for which fodder, medicines and animal husbandry equipment was supposedly bought by tax payers money. Although the scandal broke in 1996, the theft had been in progress, and increasing in size, for over two decades.

Besides its magnitude and the duration for which it was said to have existed, the scam was and continues to be covered in Indian media due to the extensive nexus between tenured government bureaucrats, elected politicians, business houses and influential people.

As it became evident that Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad would be engulfed in the scandal and its prosecution, demands for him to be removed from the chief minister's post gained momentum. On July 25, 1997, Lalu resigned from his position, but was able to install his wife, Rabri Devi as the new chief minister of Bihar on the same day.

Due to the multiplicity of cases, Lalu Yadav, Jagannath Mishra (Bihar chief minister in the 1970s and accused of knowing involvement in the scam), and the other accused have been remanded several times from the year 2000. Till now, about 200 people have been punished with jail terms of between 2 and 7 years.

Since the reports of Bihar Cattle fodder Scam broke into public light, the fodder scam has become symbolic of bureaucratic corruption and the criminalization of politics in India generally, and in Bihar in particular. Lalu Prasad is the only person in the parliamentary history of the Republic of India on whom the Lok Sabha debated for a complete session as the official agenda.

Satyam Scam - Raju’s Satyam Fraud

Ramalingam Raju alongwith 2 other accused of the Satyam Scandal, had been granted bail from Supreme Court on 4th November 2011 as the investigation agency CBI failed to file the chargesheet even after more than 33 months of Raju been arrested.

Raju had appointed a task force to address the Maytas situation in the last few days before revealing the news of the accounting fraud. After the scandal broke, the then-board members elected Ram Mynampati to be Satyam's interim CEO. Mynampati's statement on Satyam's website said:

"We are obviously shocked by the contents of the letter. The senior leaders of Satyam stand united in their commitment to customers, associates, suppliers and all shareholders. We have gathered together at Hyderabad to strategize the way forward in light of this startling revelation."

On 10 January 2009, the Company Law Board decided to bar the current board of Satyam from functioning and appoint 10 nominal directors. "The current board has failed to do what they are supposed to do. The credibility of the IT industry should not be allowed to suffer." said Corporate Affairs Minister Prem Chand Gupta. Chartered accountants regulator ICAI issued show-cause notice to Satyam's auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) on the accounts fudging. "We have asked PwC to reply within 21 days," ICAI President Ved Jain said.

On the same day, the Crime Investigation Department (CID) team picked up Vadlamani Srinivas, Satyam's then-CFO, for questioning. He was arrested later and kept in judicial custody.

On 11 January 2009, the government nominated noted banker Deepak Parekh, former NASSCOM chief Kiran Karnik and former SEBI member C Achuthan to Satyam's board.

Analysts in India have termed the Satyam scandal India's own Enron scandal. Some social commentators see it more as a part of a broader problem relating to India's caste-based, family-owned corporate environment.

Immediately following the news, Merrill Lynch (now a part of Bank of America) and State Farm Insurance terminated its engagement with the company. Also, Credit Suisse suspended its coverage of Satyam. It was also reported that Satyam's auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers will be scrutinized for complicity in this scandal. SEBI, the stock market regulator, also said that, if found guilty, its license to work in India may be revoked.

Satyam was the 2008 winner of the coveted Golden Peacock Award for Corporate Governance under Risk Management and Compliance Issues, which was stripped from them in the aftermath of the scandal. The New York Stock Exchange has halted trading in Satyam stock as of 7 January 2009. India's National Stock Exchange has announced that it will remove Satyam from its S&P CNX Nifty 50-share index on 12 January. The founder of Satyam was arrested two days after he admitted to falsifying the firm's accounts. Ramalinga Raju is charged with several offences, including criminal conspiracy, breach of trust, and forgery.

The Indian Government has stated that it may provide temporary direct or indirect liquidity support to the company. However, whether employment will continue at pre-crisis levels, particularly for new recruits, is questionable.

On 14 January 2009, Price Waterhouse, the Indian division of PricewaterhouseCoopers, announced that its reliance on potentially false information provided by the management of Satyam may have rendered its audit reports "inaccurate and unreliable".

On 22 January 2009, CID told in court that the actual number of employees is only 40,000 and not 53,000 as reported earlier and that Mr. Raju had been allegedly withdrawing INR 20 crore rupees every month for paying these 13,000 non-existent employees.

The company was later bought by Tech Mahindra.

HASAN ALI BLACK MONEY MILLIONAIRE FRAUD

Hasan Ali Khan (or Syed Mohammed Hassan Ali Khan, son of late Gayasuddin Ali Khan) is a 53-year-old alleged money-launderer based in India and allegedly worth USD 9 billion or more, according to law-authorities. This figure has been verified from a letter written byUBS (Zurich) to Khan. The Government of India has also confirmed the existence of this account in UBS, and ordered him to pay Indian Rupee ₹50,000 crore (US$11.1 billion) in taxes on that wealth. However, according to Khan, he is a scrap dealer with an annual income of Indian Rupee ₹30 lakh (US$66,600). Some sources claim that he might be the fourth richest person in India and amongst the world's dollar billionaires.However, he is not officially recognized as a billionaire by any publication because most of his money is in the form of unaccounted wealth orblack money. This can be considered true because India tops the list for black money in the entire world with almost US$1456 billion in Swiss banks (USD 1.4 trillion approximately) in the form of black money. According to the data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006), India has more black money than the rest of the world combined. Indian Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt. In Swiss bank accounts, the account holder need not even give his or her name. Perhaps that explains why Hasan Ali Khan's name does not figure in any UBS accounts. Also, the account holder's name need not even appear in any of the official documents of the account.

Ketan Parekh scam stock securities

In 1992, Ketan Parekh followed the footsteps of Harshad Mehta to swindle crores of rupees from banks. A chartered accountant who used to run a family shares and stocks business, NH Securities.

Ketan however had bigger plans in mind. He targetted smaller exchanges like the Allahabad Stock Exchange and the Calcutta Stock Exchange, and bought shares in fictitious names.

His dealings revolved around shares of ten companies like Himachal Futuristic, Global Tele-Systems, SSI Ltd, DSQ Software, Zee Telefilms, Silverline, Pentamedia Graphics and Satyam Computer (K-10 scrips). To fulfil his frauds, Ketan borrowed Rs 250 crore from Global Trust Bank to fuel his ambitions. Ketan alongwith his associates also managed to get Rs 1,000 crore from the Madhavpura Mercantile Co-operative Bank. Where according to RBI regulations, a broker is allowed a loan of only Rs 15 crore (Rs 150 million).

There were evidence of price rigging in the scrips of Global Trust Bank, Zee Telefilms, HFCL, Lupin Laboratories, Aftek Infosys and Padmini Polymer. After the scam hit the news. Ketan Parekh was arrested and proceeded for criminal activities, frauds, economic offenses and is still barred from trading in the Stock Market.

ISRO Spectrum Allocation Scam

Terming as "very serious" reports alleging that ISRO benefited a private firm through allocation of scarce S-band spectrum without a bidding process, Left parties today demanded a thorough probe into the "new scam".

"This is a new issue. The ISRO is under the Department of Space which is under Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh). This is also a new scam," CPI(M) Politburo member Sitaram Yechury told reporters here.

CPI National Secretary D Raja said the new revelations were "very serious", a view echoed by senior RSP leader Abani Roy who demanded a JPC into the matter.

Media reports claimed that the Comptroller and Auditor General has initiated inquiries into ISRO's agreement with a Bangalore-based firm for launch of two satellites besides allegedly providing 70 MHz of S-band spectrum for a period of 20 years without going through a bidding process.

The report quoted the preliminary CAG estimates that the spectrum allocation could have caused the exchequer a loss in excess of Rs two lakh crore.

"The revelations have added a new dimension to the 2G spectrum scam. The ISRO is directly under the control of Department of Space headed by the Prime Minister. It is very serious as ISRO deals with space and it has implications on our security," Raja said.

He said the issue will be discussed among the four Left parties.

Roy said the Left will "definitely" demand inclusion of the "new scam" in the ambit of JPC. "Whether it should be a separate JPC or it should be incorporated in the 2G spectrum issue has to be studied," he said.

Mayawati Taj Heritage Corridor Scam

The Taj Heritage Corridor case is an alleged scam wherein, the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Mayawati and a minister in her government, Nasimuddin Siddiqui, were charged with corruption. The Taj Corridor project was intended to upgrade tourist facilities near the Taj Mahal and was to be implemented during her tenure as Chief Minister. The then BJP government at the Centre gave the Environmental Clearance required for the project near Taj Mahal. However, later on the BJP government backed out and then started saying that the project was not cleared by the Environment Ministry and blamed Mayawati for starting construction work near the heritage building of the Taj Mahal.


The project was started with the support of the Bhartiya Janata Party and interrupted when Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party disaligned itself with that party on 25 August 2003. It is said that this change in alignment was due to Mayawati's quickly-changing temperament and because of the BJP's hostility toward the Taj Heritage Corridor project. A political commentator said that the support for the Taj Corridor project came when Mayawati protected BJP leaders L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Uma Bharti from prosecution in the case of the demolition of the Babri Masjid by moving the trial of all charges except the conspiracy charge to a court in Rae Bareilly.

Further, it has been alleged that Mayawati embezzled the money dedicated for this project. The case is currently under investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation. In September 2003 Ajay Agrawal, the former government counsel in the project, began accusing Mayawati of enriching herself from the Corridor project and also stated that Mayawati had recently acquired property both in her name and in the care of her relatives. Initially, the case saw some rapid progress, when the Central Bureau of Investigation conducted extensive searches on her various addresses, and claimed that though she had claimed income of only Rs. 1.1 crores during her tenure as CM, her bank balance in a single bank went up to 2.5 crore and total assets held by her were estimated at Rs.15 crore. At one point a warrant was expected for her arrest, but she was granted a stay order.

However, since late 2003, investigations appear to have slowed down; there are speculations in the media about political interference, and the Supreme Court of India has several times pulled up the CBI for its tardy progress in the case. Media sources reported that various officials who had been investigating the case were transferred to other duties.

The project is now defunct, and plans are being made to remove the partial construction near the Taj Mahal site and replace it with a low tech forested greenbelt.

Telgi Stamp Paper Scam

Abdul Karim Telgi, born in 1961is a convicted counterfeit for printing and selling fake stamp papers. Telgi started is life by selling fruits and vegetables in Indian Railways and later moved to Saudi Arabia. He returned to India after seven years and started his career in counterfeiting, originally focusing on fake passports.

The tentacles of the Telgi fake stamp and stamp paper scam, better known as the Telgi scam, has penetrated 12 states and is estimated at a whopping Rs 20,000 crore plus. In between the years of 1992 and 2002, 12 cases were registered against Abdul Kareem Telgi relating to counterfeit stamps in Maharashtra alone and 15 cases in other parts of the country, but the lack of serious action suggests that the scamster had mastered the technique of corrupting the system. The Telgi stamp paper scam is by no means a case of police corruption and political connivance helping an ingenious crook to set up a fast-growing dubious business in India. Telgi clearly had a lot of support from departments and institutions of government that are responsible for the production and sale of high security stamps.

Even more shocking is the fact that the Special Investigation Team’s enquiry report, better known as the Jaiswal report, had already asked these questions in November 2002, but no action has been initiated on the wider issues raised in the report. For instance, the Jaiswal Committee has asked why such a sensational economic crime with national and interstate ramifications should not have been entrusted to a specialised agency such as the CID (crime), the CBI, or at least to a dedicated team of officers with personal integrity and excellent record. It was only due to the public interest litigation filed by social activist Anna Hazare that the SIT investigation is now on course and has trapped several high ranking police officials, some inconsequential politicians and is soon likely to ensnare a couple of big political names.

Meanwhile, many questions remain unasked and counterfeit stamps probably continue to be sold across the country, because the distribution network of these fake stamp papers is untouched. The Jaiswal report has indicated clearcut connivance of officials of the India Security Press at Nasik, Maharashtra in the transfer of appropriate technology, including transfer of stamp designs and from original negatives; that the Security Press was completely infiltrated by unscrupulous elements. Yet, no heads have rolled at the Press, nor has any urgent action been initiated to overhaul its systems and procedures. Similarly, the failure of treasury department officials to notice the large-scale use of counterfeit stamps in Maharashtra to be investigated as well. What has been revealed so far is just the tip of the iceberg and many more faces have to come to light. The scam was so skillfully crafted keeping in mind the loop-holes and involvement with government officials that the investigation revealed only the name of Abdul Karim Telgi and no other individual.

Source Financial Express