If it's Robert Vadra, controversies can't be far away. The latest is his and his assistant Manoj Arora's links with a controversial arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. Income-Tax (I-T) sleuths have unearthed at least four e-mail exchanges between them, discussing about a “benami” property in London, during a raid.
For the Congress, the controversy could not have come at a worse time. It surfaces at a time when Congressmen are rooting for his Vadra's wife Priyanka to take command of poll-bound Uttar Pradesh to reverse their political fortunes. As TV channels started flashing the news on Monday afternoon, Vadra’s lawyers flatly denied the charges. Lawyer Suman Khaitan denied any business relation between Vadra and Bhandari or his involvement in any defence contract.
Last month, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and I-T department raided 18 premises owned by Bhandari. A preliminary report by the raiding team mentioned that in the e-mails Vadra, his assistant and a London-based relative of Bhandari, known as Sumit Chaddha, discussed payments and renovations of a London home (12 Ellerton House, Bryanston Square) bought for £19 lakh (Rs 19 crore) in October 2009 and sold in June 2010.
In an e-mail dated April 4, 2010, Chaddha discussed the progress of repair and renovation with Vadra and sought reimbursement of expenses. The preliminary report, which is drafted ahead of I-T proceedings, shows Vadra replying to Chaddha, saying he “would look into the issue" and his “secretary” Manoj will be “in touch”.
Bhandari, who was jailed in 2000 for tax evasion in a case involving the import of foreign cars, is the owner of Offset India Solutions (OIS). He fell on I-T radar after OIS' paid-up capital jumped from just Rs 1 lakh in 2008 to several crores later. OIS Advanced Technology had clinched an agreement with French defence major Rafale to supply parts for the 38 combat aircraft that India is buying from Dassault Aviation. Ironically, the Union government is yet to finalise the agreement with their French counterpart to purchase these aircraft.
He had set up another joint venture with LH Aviation to make a new class of high-endurance Medium-Altitude, Long Endurance Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in India. Bhandari, during initial interrogation, said he would be able to confirm about the London property only after consulting his lawyer in London. It is also said that he tried to destroy his BlackBerry phone during the raids. He is also under probe for his linkage to 35 suspected shell companies between 2009 and 2014.
Earlier in 2008, he was discharged by the Supreme Court in the alleged evasion of customs duty on imported cars. The scam made headlines in 2005 when the Department of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) seized foreign luxury cars from Bollywood star Suniel Shetty and Chandan Basu, son of former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu.
The I-T probe is also trying to establish the source of funds to the tune of about Rs 70 crore, including over Rs 6 crore, from abroad. The agency found that, between 2009 and 2014, large sums of money were purportedly transferred through about three dozen local companies in installments.
The government is verifying the authenticity of a set of documents recovered from his Bhandari's premises. Sources here said that the Union home ministry had written to the defence ministry to determine whether a criminal case under the Official Secrets Act (OSA) could be registered against Bhandari. The I-T department is believed to have passed on documents related to defence purchases to the home ministry.
“Since the documents pertain to the defence ministry, the home ministry would be in a better position to say whether they were of a classified nature or not,” a senior official here said.
