Tag: 2Gscam

Precisely the reason Congress is cheesed off publicly and DMK in private.

Raja  seems to have taken more than 10% initially agreed upon.

The covenant was 60 to Sonia Gandhi, 30 to Karunanidhi and 10 to Raja.( Swamy’s statement)

Congress is wary of taking strict action as the cat will be out of the bag.

DMK is waiting for alliance with Congress.

If it comes through Raja will be dumped; else Raja will be portrayed as a ‘Dalit’ and  a ‘victim of Dravidian Aryan conspiracy’.

Raja ran his empire through proxy. To ensure his directors didn’t take their roles too seriously, he got advance undated resignations from them….

As the CBI puts the jigsaw puzzle together, it finds Raja had set up front companies well before the spectrum allocation: a mix of hawala channels, realty firms, NGOs, family trusts and export firms ensuring safe passage for the spoils of politics. For this, he established contact with NRIs, audit firms in Malaysia and local companies in Chennai, Perambalur, Trichy, and Coimbatore. With easy money flowing in, many became millionaires overnight.

One such man was Sadiq Batcha, who heads several real estate firms in Chennai. Twenty years ago, he was a salesman in Pallapatti village in Salem district, knocking at doors to sell sarees on 10 instalments. Later, he sold radios and tape recorders. Unable to make ends meet, he migrated to Perambalur, where he met AIADMK’s Varathur Arunachalam. This was his stroke of luck, his key to fame and fortune. Arunachalam introduced him to Raja, a small-time DMK politician. Both were ambitious and ready to take risks. It was Raja who told him to venture into real estate. With small investments on both sides, they grew together. Today Batcha’s real estate empire is worth more than Rs. 2,000 crore.

Batcha floated companies one after another with Raja’s close relatives on the board of directors. Chennai-based Green House Promoters, a private limited company set up in 2004 with a seed capital of Rs. 1 lakh, grew exponentially to record a turnover of several hundred crores in a short span. It opened an office in Singapore in 2006. Raja’s wife Parameshwari joined the board in 2007. The Enforcement Directorate issued a notice to the company for Foreign Exchange Management Act violations and the Singapore office was shut down in 2009.

WHILE INTERROGATING RP Paramesh Kumar, the son of Raja’s sister Vijayammal, and joint managing director of Green House Promoters, the CBI has unearthed huge money transfers through export orders. The Enforcement Directorate is probing the possibility of the use of textile and vegetable exporters based in Chennai, Tirupur and Coimbatore to channel the money through hawala operations.

Paramesh Kumar is a common factor in all Raja companies, whose personal and company accounts show large-scale money transactions. But then, all the companies made huge profits within a short span of time — and this happened from 2008 onwards, right when the rest of the world was coping with the global meltdown.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main48.asp?filename=Ne010111Coverstory.asp

Relatd:

CHENNAI: With Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers M.K. Alagiri showing signs of disquiet at not being able to have his way in the affairs of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the party leadership is worried about the political fall-out, with the general election only months away.

Mr. Alagiri, who was never comfortable as a Union Minister, spoke to his father and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi a few days ago about his desire to play a greater role in the DMK. Although he was made the organising secretary for the southern zone of the party, Mr. Alagiri resented the fact that his younger brother and Deputy Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, M.K. Stalin, continued to wield influence within the party units in the southern districts.

Developments over the 2G spectrum issue also appear to have agitated Mr. Alagiri, who wanted the party to take a tough line against the former Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, A. Raja. Mr. Alagiri asked Mr. Karunanidhi to remove Mr. Raja from his post as the DMK’s propaganda secretary, arguing that the party needed to distance itself from the spectrum scam.

http://hindu.com/2011/01/06/stories/2011010651640100.htm