In 2013, there was a CBI raid on the Aditya Birla Group of companies, in particular Hindalco, in connection with the coalgate scam. In that raid, apart from recovering Rs 25 crores in cash, the CBI also recovered some information stored in the computer of the CEO of the Birla group – Amitabh. Several documents were recovered – some of them showed bribes being paid to some Environment Project J, which is obviously to the ministry or to the minister of environment. We know that around the same time the Birla group of companies was trying to secure environmental clearances from the ministry of environment for a large number of their projects. So those clearly represented bribes paid for getting the environmental clearances. There was another set of documents which was recovered from the computer of Shubhendu Amitabh, which said, “Gujarat CM – Rs 25 crores. 12 paid. 13?”
Unfortunately, though these documents showed payment of bribes and therefore, offences under Prevention of Corruption Act, the CBI did not register any FIR on this matter but just passed the papers on to the income tax (IT) department.
Income tax department did a somewhat detailed investigation into the matter. They questioned Amitabh many times in which he admitted that he had written, “Gujarat CM – Rs 25 crores. 12 paid. 13?” But he said that “Gujarat CM” meant Gujarat Alkalis and Chemicals. When asked what the C and M stood for he was unable to answer and the IT department concluded that he was lying.
They also found that there was a large amount of cash which was being received through Hawala by the Birla group and was apparently being paid to various people. But despite this the IT department did not refer the matter back to the CBI for investigation of these ostensible offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the matter was sought to be buried at that level. After that we understand that the Birla group has approached the IT settlement commission for settling the matter and the hearings have been concluded; the matter is likely to be settled after which there is this apprehension that the papers seized in the raids will be returned back to the Birla group.
The Sahara raid took place on November 22, 2014. In this raid Rs 137 crores of cash was seized from their offices in Noida, from the corporate office of the chairman, and a large number of documents, some loose sheets, computer data from his personal staff were seized, which showed details of proposed as well as actual payments made to various senior political figures. One of the documents which was seized – a printout of a detailed spreadsheet – in which the first three columns represent the cash the Sahara group received on different dates from different sources and the total comes to Rs 115 crores. Thereafter, this document also represents cash payments to different people on different dates and the places where the payment has been made, and the persons who have taken the payment are also mentioned. It is signed by the IT officer, two witnesses and one of the Sahara officials. Several such documents were recovered in this raid. There was another one which was partly overlapping with minute differences. For example, in the previous one the payments which were referred to as, “cash given at Ahmedabad, Modiji”, in other documents they are referred to as, “cash given to CM Gujarat”. There are Rs 40 crores given at Ahmedabad to Modiji, Rs 10 crores given to CM of Madhya Pradesh, Rs 4 crores to CM of Chhattisgarh, Rs 1 crore to CM of Delhi which at that time was Ms Sheila Dikshit. These are all payments made between 2013 and March 2014.
Despite recovery of such incriminating documents and in such detail which showed pay-offs made to various senior political figures, the IT department did not refer this matter to the CBI for investigation under the Prevention of Corruption Act. They apparently prepared some appraisal report which according to my understanding does not deal with these papers and the pay-offs, and these documents were buried. The person who was responsible for burying the documents of both Birla and Sahara was K. V. Chowdary, who was heading the IT investigations at the time and thereafter was appointed, apparently as a reward, as the chief of central vigilance commissioner of the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC). It was the first time a revenue officer was appointed although there were a number of complaints against him; his name appeared several times in the entry register of the infamous former CBI director, Ranjit Sinha, who was involved in interfering with the income tax assessment of Ponty Chadha. He was also involved in the stock guru scam which is apparently still under investigation. Despite that, Chowdary was still appointed. We challenged his as well as the appointment of another person in the CVC. Because of our information that he played a major role in suppressing the information, we have filed an application. When I got these documents in October, I sent a complaint to CVC, CBDT, the Enforcement Directorate, CBI and to the SIT on black money, saying that these are highly incriminating documents and according to the principles laid by the Supreme Court in the Jain Hawala case these should have been investigated – whether these payments were made, why were they were made, if these were bribes or some other kind of payments – but none of that was done. The matter was sought to be buried.
Therefore, we have eventually moved the Supreme Court, filed an application in the petition that we had filed challenging the appointment of the CVC and that application will be heard on Friday.
Sahara diaries mention a lot of names but they don’t specifically name the politicians, for example, like you said the Delhi CM and so on. Are there more? Who are the other prominent politicians mentioned in the list?
There’s Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Delhi CM at the time, Sheila Dikshit, Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh and the Gujarat CM at the time, Mr Modi. Mr Modi is also personally mentioned as Modiji. Largest payments are made to him in the Sahara diaries, more than Rs 40 crores. One other politician which is mentioned prominently is Shaina NC of the BJP and one of the documents says that she was being asked to intercede with the advocate general of Maharashtra for withdrawal of some case which was pending against Sahara. Perhaps the Sebi case (which was mentioned as the Bombay case in the papers).
The Modi government is already in the know of these papers because you have already written to various agencies. What are the kind of replies you got from the government?
Well, I only received one response from the CVC after ten days saying, “Will you please confirm whether you have sent this complaint?” I immediately confirmed that I sent this complaint and I am not aware as to what they have done, or whether they have done anything in this matter because unfortunately, it seems that the CVC himself, as the head of investigation of income tax was responsible for suppressing this.”