National Herald’s Associated Journals Turned Into Young Indian: Signatures Do Not Lie

This is a season of previous alleged wrong-doings coming home to roost for many prominent persons in the Opposition. At least three political parties are in focus, as it happens, simultaneously.

Parliament and the streets of India are disrupted with cries that allege misuse of government agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

The images of sloganeering, scuffling with the police, barriers over-turned, arson, purple prose from friendly journalists on websites and print media, indignant pro-opposition panellists and spokespersons on prime-time debates, fill our TV screens. This is on all the news channels.

It looks like a tough moment of reckoning in all three political parties, though how the judiciary will view the charges and the evidence presented in due course is anybody’s guess.

It is a hot, humid, monsoon season of exposure, embarrassment, and political damage for some. Congress is busy trying to deflect attention and play victim. It calls its political stir on the streets a Satyagraha, invokes Mahatma Gandhi and the freedom movement. It sits on the road outside the All India Congress Committee (AICC) HQ, courting arrest. In the states, it gheraos the offices of the ED and menaces its officials.

The convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party and Delhi’s Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal calls the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ‘Savarkar Ke Aulad’ with accompanying sneer. He dares the government to find any wrongdoing in an alleged liquor scam presided over by his Education and Deputy Chief Minister. This, after his Health Minister has recently been detained for alleged money laundering, and other prominent MLAs for instigating riots, grabbing property, etc.

Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata avers she has zero tolerance for corruption even as one of her former senior-most ministers is hauled away for questioning after more than Rs. 20 crores in cash plus gold worth Rs. 70 lakhs is found by the ED in the flat of his close associate. The discovery of a series of shell companies associated with the former minister suggest the scam is about to get very much bigger.

Her nephew and heir apparent in the TMC, is also under the CBI/ED scanner for money laundering in a coal scam, along with his wife. Here too, in an attempt to obstruct, the investigating officers were gheraoed in Kolkata.

The Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the Trinamool Congress (TMC), members of which are all under investigation, have promptly accused the Government of India of political vendetta.

It is the end of democracy, they scream. Our members are being expelled from parliament for protesting trumped up corruption charges. Why don’t you debate all this, asks the media. But why spoil a perfectly good uproar, the opposition must be thinking. Perhaps we can extract some political sympathy from the electorate.

We are not afraid, says its leadership, looking angry, cornered, and truth be told, very afraid. It is a crackdown by the brute majority in the house.

To the viewing public, it is as if a number of sizeable bandicoots have simultaneously been ensnared in traps, screeching for dear life. The underlying theme is how dare the Modi government catch us at all for questioning.

The latest Congress leadership scam in the eye of the lens however is so blatantly and carelessly executed, that it is representative of an imperial attitude.

One that says we own this country, let alone a few buildings, and there is no power on earth that can dare to point a finger at us. And that we will always be in power, as we have been for more than five decades already. When we were not in government, we still controlled the government of the day. Today, you may have the government and most of the states, but we still own the ecosystem. Nothing can happen in this country without our consent.

To illustrate this attitude further, the top leaders, rank and file of the Congress Party protest noisily whenever the Gandhis are called in for questioning. The protests are in violation of Section 144 imposed, which seeks to prevent a gathering of more than four people on the streets and public spaces it covers.  Tear gas, water cannons, and mass arrests in busloads have had to be resorted to by the government to impose its will, even as the Congress hordes have chosen to ignore the law.

Not only have the mother-son duo of Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, at the helm of the Congress Party, allegedly usurped the property of the National Herald newspaper, but have been enjoying control over the commercial rent on them for several years already.

The properties were built on land leased to National Herald decades ago by various Congress central and state governments at highly concessional rates. Others have been purchased since, ostensibly to support publishing, but actually as commercial properties to earn more rent.

In a sleight-of-hand set of actions, in 2010, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi became owners of the shares in the company (Young Indian), that has beneficial ownership of all National Herald properties as of 2011. They own the shares 38% each, totalling to 76% between themselves. The balance shareholding is held by others drawn from the Congress Party, including Oscar Fernandes and Motilal Vora.  

 The properties involved are worth between Rs.2,000 and Rs. 5,000 crores according to varied estimates. Young Indian is a ‘Section 25 not-for-profit company’ with an initial corpus of just Rs. 5 lakhs. It is tax exempt provided it does not pursue commercial activity and puts its profit, if any, towards charitable purposes. It cannot even pay dividends.

However, the commercial rent exacted at market rates on them, from properties in Delhi, Mumbai, Panchkula, Lucknow, Patna, Indore etc. has run into hundreds of crores. This rent received, and allegedly transferred clandestinely to the Gandhis in turn, plus the takeover of AJL shares into Young Indian without paying stamp duty or taxes, has attracted an income tax bill running into about Rs 250 crores so far. All efforts at getting this demand squashed have failed.

The present case is largely to do with Rs. 1 crore obtained as a loan via an alleged cash transaction and fraudulent ‘entry’ obtained from a foreign exchange dealer cum hawala operator in Kolkata. This attracts the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), the violation of which is a criminal act, unlike, for example, the tax evasion, which is classified as a civil offence.

This Rs. 1 crore, the source of its funding being a mystery, was used by the Gandhi duo to take over 100% of the beneficial ownership of the shares in AJL which owned the National Herald and its assets. The Gandhis ended up owning 76% of the thousands of crores of National Herald property, effectively for this payment of Rs. 1 crore.  

AJL also had a liability of Rs. 90 crores on its books, built up over the years as the National Herald lay defunct from 2008. To clear this, the Congress Party allegedly infused a loan of Rs. 90 crores into AJL, interest free.

There is no evidence of this money actually coming into the books of AJL however, apart from a general entry. It was this Rs. 90 crores that purportedly allowed it to convert AJL debt into equity so that it could be purchased by Young Indian subsequently in 2011.

This is problematic, even if true, as political parties are not allowed to give loans, and it is certainly unusual for a political party to clear the debt of a newspaper like this.

The net result was Young Indian, the new company formed, was able to take over the shares of AJL free of all liabilities. One of the other shareholders of both AJL and Young Indian was Motilal Vora, the now deceased Treasurer of the Congress Party.

Both Rahul Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi during their questioning by the ED have claimed to have no knowledge of the legal and financial transactions involved, because they were handled exclusively by the deceased Motilal Vora.

However, the signatures of both Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi appear prominently wherever the paper work needed it. It is therefore not unreasonable to infer they knew what they were signing for.

Here the first order of batting is to do with the PMLA violation and the criminal charge it carries. Meanwhile, the lease on Herald House in New Delhi and the land in Panchkula have reportedly been revoked for violation of terms.

It remains to be seen whether the judiciary accepts the defence that the Gandhi mother and son duo knew nothing about the whole thing, particularly the money laundering in this instance, because it was handled by Vora.

If it accepts this, the Gandhis could go scott-free despite their signatures on every document and their beneficial ownership of the properties. The fraudulent acquisition process and use of the rent has a bearing, but the key thing is the Rs. 1 crore obtained from the hawala operator in Kolkata.

But all in all, the ED has revived the investigation after a long lull from 2015 when the Gandhis obtained bail in the matter. It seems to feel that it has a good case that will stick.

(1,538 words)

July 27^th, 2022

For: Firstpost/News18

Gautam Mukherjee