Cutting across party lines MPs of India have agreed to lobby for a non-existent Australian firm for bribes.
This was revealed in a sting operation by CobraPost.
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Investigative website Cobrapost has exposed 11 MPs who were willing to write letters of recommendation for a fictitious foreign oil major for money.
The investigation, panning over a year, exposes MPs from Congress, BJP, BSP, JD(U) and AIADMK willing to issue letters of recommendation to promote a fictitious Australian oil exploration company in exchange for fees ranging between Rs 50,000 to Rs 50 lakh. Six of these MPs even wrote the letters for a fee.
Code-named ‘Operation Falcon Claw’, Cobrapost expose claims that the MPs were willing to not only write recommendation letters but also lobby with the Union ministry of petroleum to help the company secure oil exploration and rigging rights in the northeast.
However, none of these 11 MPs bothered to check the antecedents of the company or check if the company was real, Cobrapost claimed. What they hankered after was money, quoting as low as Rs 50,000 to a mind-boggling Rs 50 lakh as the price for a letter of recommendation, delivered all in cash. One MP even demanded that his fee be delivered through a hawala operator. Six MPs issued letters of recommendation to Cobrapost.
The parliamentarians who were exposed are K Sugumar and C Rajendran from AIADMK; Lalu Bhai Patel, Ravindra Kumar Pandey and Hari Manjhi from BJP; Vishwa Mohan Kumar, Maheshwar Hazari and Bhudeo Chaudhary from JD(U); Khiladi Lal Bairwa and Vikrambhai Arjanbhai from Congress; and Kaiser Jahan from BSP.
The MPs.
Four of these MPs are from Bihar. Three are from JD-U and one is from BJP. Bhudeo Chaudhary from Jamui, Vishwa Mohan Kumar from Supaul and Maheshwar Hazari from Samastipur are from JDU. The fourth one is Hari Manjhi from Gaya is from BJP.
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