NEW DELHI: Piqued by the heat generated by former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan’s recent letter about bad loans, the Centre has asked finance and corporate affairs ministries to review all the complaints the Narendra Modi-led government has received.
Apart from whistleblowers’ alerts, the review will include inter-departmental letters where the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has been tagged for corruption charges against investigative officials. According to highly placed sources, the move is a direct fallout of Rajan’s letter to a parliamentary panel, in which he claimed to have flagged the bad loans issue to the PMO, clearly mentioning the names of potential defaulters.
Rajan had written to the Parliamentary Estimate Committee on September 6 that he never heard from the PMO on his letter. The top banker’s missive gave Opposition a chance to attack Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that PMO sat on the letter and took no action.
An official told TNIE that whenever the PMO receives a complaint, it forwards a copy to the respective department for action. However, the PMO has allegedly not acted upon some high-profile cases including that of Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi, despite whistleblowers flagging the matter.
One such case was of Hari Prasad SV, a Bengaluru-based jeweller who claimed to have approached the Enforcement Directorate, Central Bureau of Investigation, Securities Exchange Board of India, Ministry of Corporate Affairs and the PMO on July 26, 2016, against Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.
“The ministries keep on receiving a number of letters flagging corruption or financial fraud. Some are serious while others are frivolous or written with a vested interest. Now, the department concerned will give a detailed action and take report on all the complaints and, if dismissed, the reason for dropping the investigation. A copy of the report will have to be submitted to the PMO by November,” said an official.
The review process will help the PMO keep a tab on all such complaints.
What Rajan said
I sent a list of high-profile cases to the Prime Minister’s Office urging that we coordinate action to bring at least one or two to book. I am not aware of any progress on this front.
"The RBI set up a fraud monitoring cell when I was Governor to coordinate the early reporting of fraud cases to the investigative agencies. I also sent a list of high profile cases to the PMO urging that we coordinate action to bring at least one or two to book. I am not aware of progress on this front. This is a matter that should be addressed with urgency," he said.