Tehelka, a muck-raking journal in India, has a critical account of the public-private wheeling and dealing that made Rajat Gupta enemies in India. It doesn’t have links or other evidence, so take it with some skepticism.
Now, no sympathies for Public-Private deals from me.
But, here’s my point, this is an INDIAN ISSUE, not an American one.
The fact that Gupta invested with a Pakistani minister in the Indian telecom sector, or that the he got land at cheap rates from the government, should be addressed in the Indian legal system.
It seems mind-boggling that charges in one country (which I don’t know for sure are true, either) should somehow justify conviction somewhere else on unrelated and insubstantial evidence.
If there is a civil/ criminal issue in India, that is a matter for the courts there.
Moreover, some of the charges against Gupta in his dealings in India through New Silk Route, first arose in Wikileaks, if I recall right…..
But, here’s my point. Will Goldman Sachs or other foreign investors in India, who came in the door that Gupta opened, pull out, because Gupta is tossed out?
I doubt it…
Point Two.
Tehelka itself has been severely criticized for its tactics (including conducting private stings, invasions of privacy and extortion). And some of its journalists are accused of financial improprieties, as well.
And, even more intriguingly, and very much like it is here in the US, some of these journalistic exposes of business deals are written by people with skin in the game themselves, i.e., they profit by the negative stories.
So my guess is that the Gupta story is better explained as a bankster take-down of a convenient patsy, even if the patsy himself was once a prominent part of the globalist agenda.
“According to sources, Gupta was provided land at throwaway or rather no price for his projects across India–be it in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Orissa or Punjab due to patronage received from the highest levels. The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) in July 2006 sanctioned a one-time grant of Rs 65 crore to him to launch the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI). Gupta was later sanctioned another Rs 36.15 crore in the 2007-08 budget without any explanation.
….Then PM’s Principal Secretary T Kutty Aiyappan Nair, who is now his adviser, is among four senior bureaucrats appointed on the governing board of PHFI at the time of sanction of the first grant while Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia is on its advisory board. Gupta, former director of Goldman Sachs and Procter and Gamble, is chairman of the foundation.
Another organisation of Gupta promoted by the PM is the Indian School of Business (ISB). The Centre didn’t object to hefty sums of money Gupta has been collecting as fees while claiming it to be one of his philanthropic activities. The PM persuaded the Punjab government to acquire 70 acres of prime land worth Rs 105 crore from farmers in Mohali for leasing it to the school for 99 years at a token rate of Rs 1 per acre. The ISB website says it plans to enroll 280 students at the Mohali branch in 2012.
The $1.4 billion New Silk Route, a firm started by Gupta with Galleon Group chief Raj Rajaratnam–who has been sentenced to 11 years’ jail for inside trading—to focus on investments in India, secured a licence for broadband wireless services in Madhya Pradesh in June last year through its subsidiary Augere Mauritius. One of the founding partners of the firm is Pakistan Finance Minister Abdul.
The power Gupta wields in the corridors of power in New Delhi is such that nobody in the Home Ministry raised any questions on the deal despite Augere Mauritius providing broadband Internet services in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Karachi.
It was because of Gupta’s proximity to the PM that Sberbank, Russia’s largest state-run bank, appointed him to its board as the first and only foreigner at five times the salary of its Russian directors to use his good offices for entering the Indian banking sector. It got the Reserve Bank of India’s clearance to open a full service branch in New Delhi in August 2009. Since then, Gupta has been retained as a strategic adviser just, in case, his influence is needed again.”