BLACK MONEY BOGEY
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    • BLACK MONEY BOGEY
    India has forgotten an ideologue of yesteryears. Mr.MohanGuruswamy who was advisor to Atal Bihari Vajpayee when he was PM. He made a famous quote. Parties are no longer run on 4 anna memberships of Gandhi era. The implications are that every ruling party uses policies to extract money from business and rich to feed andrun the party.  How is that late Pramod Mahajan pardoned MukeshAmbani for having launched mobile services in his wireless inlocal loopl licence after a token penalty? Swaminathan Aiyer, a columnist of Times of India observed inone of his columns that with global economy on a tailspin and paltry two percent interest that swiss bank offers, blackmoney is not at alldeposited with banks in tax havens. He argued that black money takes a circuitous route to tax havens and come back as FDI - through participatory notes for which neither market watchdog SEBI nor Central Bank could question thebeneficial owner.  This way ill gotten wealth becomes legal and you get a bounty in the form of dividend payouts and capital appreciation as well. You do not pay capital gains on such earnings as they are registered in mauritius and claymore island andsuch tax havens. That is the truth. BJP was harping on bringing back black money slashed in Swiss Banks. Businessmen who had parked funds I believe have already routed them to Indian stock markets and made a killing. Even if there is something left out, it will be only advisable to offer an amnesty tax them and allow them to have the money secretively held.

    Investigations in UK has revealed that Anil Ambani had used this route to invest in his group companies. This man has been the chip of the old block using political connections to subvert the law. not that Mukesh is impeccable.But Anil is a man in a hurry. He was a member of parliament of Samajwadi Party lead by a Lohia socialist. How ironical? ADAG claims that this issue has been settled by SEBI in one of its consent orders. The legality of consent orders havenow been questioned in the Supreme Court. We shall await for the judgement to find how much dirty money was allowed to be forgiven by the watchdog and for what quid pro quo? Why Anna Hazare and his ilk are not protesting ?

    Corporate lobbyist Nira Radia had hung her boots for now. Her leaked conversations contained many explosive news. In one such NK Singh of JDU speaks passionately about tax concessions to Reliance with retrospective effect amounting to Rs.80000crores. No one was interested to find if such a concession was indeed given.  RIL gold plating exercise found a mention in the media. Just when Petroleum ministry was exploring to recover the excess money withdrawn against PSC,RIL served an arbitration notice. Ministry hasnowback tracked. Why the Team Anna has not chosen to protest against this day light robbery?

    Corruption has many faces and one ombudsman in the Lok Pal - even if theJan Lok Pal of Anna variety is adopted, that is not going to be finished unless we get our priorities right.
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