'Modi'fied banking rules, a Rs 140-bn scandal and a mortified common man. By Mitali Saran // PNB Fraud: Can NiMo Shake Up NaMo? By Arati R Jerath
I’m no good with
financials. When people talk about futures and hedging and shorting, I think of
retirement, shrubbery, and electrical fires. When they talk about interest
rates and capital gains, I think about guitar practice and metro lines. But I
have come to realise that there’s a lot of money to be made in India if you’re
good with financials—and by good, I mean so bad that it’s criminal.I only dimly
understand the Nirav Modi-Punjab National Bank scam because of the helpful ‘explainers’ put out
by Reuters and The Wire and scroll.in etc.
Some badly brought up PNB bank officials colluded with the equally badly
brought up Nirav Modi and his family and their companies, to
issue loans based on Letters of Understanding of which they kept no record,
and against which they saw no need for any collateral.
This allowed Modi and
gang to borrow what we first thought totalled Rs 110 billion (Rs 11,000 crore)
of public money, and now think is more like Rs 140 billion (Rs 14,000 crore).
The ease of doing business in India rocks! Big shiny
rocks.I know he’s a ‘diamantaire’ and all, and everyone knows that diamants are
more expensive than diamonds, but hello, that’s like 1.55 million perfectly
nice guitars. Who could possibly want or need 1.55 million perfectly nice
guitars? I’m pretty sure it would cause the interest rate in guitars to drop
dramatically. Nirav Modi and his family all left the country at the
beginning of January, and even the most trusting soul would have a hard time
believing that they weren’t tipped off.
That Nirav appeared in
a photo op with Narendra in Davos, just before the CBI lookout circular was issued, makes even that most
trusting soul think that he figured all would be well.I don’t watch the
so-called North Korean channels anymore, but I imagine they also have
explainers that conclusively trace this massive scam back through the UPA government all the way to
Nehru, who has been seriously messing up everything this government has tried
so hard to do for four years. Nevertheless, even they cannot explain why a
complaint registered against Nirav Modi in 2016 went un-investigated on the watch
of India’s self-proclaimed chowkidar.The government is of course infuriated…by
the fact that social media has bestowed the hashtag #ChhotaModi on Nirav.
The Finance Minister
has not uttered a squeak on Twitter. This makes sense. The same government is
infuriated by citizens questioning the anti-human design and implementation of
Aadhaar. It is arguing in court that there is no public interest in
investigating the death of Judge Loya. It calls fact-checking ‘anti-national’ and
‘fake news’. It privileges pseudo-nationalism over humanism. In sum, in four
years it has established a strong record in focussing like a proud and
confident hawk, on entirely the wrong thing.
Rs 140 billion! It makes one
nostalgic for all the piddly two-digit crore scams of the past. It makes the
most upright citizen sit up and think, What a fool I’ve been, paying my taxes,
diligently repaying my loans, following the rules, scrupulously doing things by
the book, when there’s this big, beautiful world of unregulated chicanery I
could have indulged in for years before just flying off to greener pastures,
like Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya, and Nirav Modi.It also makes the upright citizen sit up and
type on Whatsapp, as someone I know did to a relative overseas, “Please take
all your money out of Indian banks and RUN.”
PNB Fraud: Can NiMo Shake Up NaMo? By Arati R Jerath
The key issue is that while Nirav’s “crimes” may belong to another era, he and his family managed to flee India in Modi’s times. Extradition processes being lengthy and cumbersome, it looks like Nirav Modi will manage to escape investigation and trial. The similarities with the stealthy exit of two others accused of swindling money, liquor baron Vijay Mallaya and cricketing czar Lalit Modi, are too glaring to ignore. Ironically, they too are accused of crimes when the UPA was in power but they slipped out of the country after the Modi government assumed office.
For the first time in four years, Modi’s “na khaunga, na khanedunga” boast has come under a cloud as questions abound why his government was sleeping on the job after the PMO was alerted about the Nirav scam in 2016 through a complaint filed by someone named Hari Prasad. Unfortunately, Modi is a prisoner of his own image. It defies belief that a powerful, hands on prime minister like Modi would not have personally vetted the list of business leaders who would be present at Davos, attend a CII meeting addressed by him, and be part of a group photograph. It also defies belief that a complaint filed with the PMO of a bank fraud of this scale would not have been shown to Modi for information, especially since this government has a voracious appetite for corruption scandals associated with Congress governments.
No official in Modi’s PMO has the kind of power or personal equation with the PM that say Brajesh Mishra had with Atal Behari Vajpayee or AN Verma had with Narasimha Rao or PN Haksar had with Indira Gandhi. Mishra, Verma and Haksar were almost alter egos of their bosses who trusted them implicitly to make the right decisions on their behalf. The two top officers in Modi’s PMO, Nirpen Misra and PK Mishra, know that their boss runs a tight ship and has to be kept in the loop on everything, no matter how small… read more:
https://www.bloombergquint.com/opinion/2018/02/17/pnb-fraud-can-nimo-shake-up-namo
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