Cong announces Rs 1 lakh for identity of man seen exchanging money in video

Ahmedabad: Congress leader Kapil Sibal on Friday said his party would give a cash reward of Rs 1 lakh to anyone who could reveal the identity of a man seen in a video purportedly exchanging demonetised notes with face value of Rs 5 crore.

Speaking at a press conference in the city where he played the video clip for the media, Sibal claimed it was shot in Ahmedabad and that Kamalam, the ruling BJP's headquarters in Gujarat, was also involved. The grainy video, reportedly shot by journalists here and obtained from a website called www.tnn.world, shows a bearded man exchanging demonetised currency with a face value of Rs 5 crore with new Rs 2,000 notes totalling Rs 3 crore. "The (video) episode happened in Ahmedabad. The person in the video was apparently very close to the BJP. He may well have been a member of the BJP. He, along with others, was running a racket of illegally converting thousands of crores of unaccounted currency after December 31, 2016 (post demonetisation on November 8 that year)," Sibal said. "The process of conversion must have involved politicians, bankers, brokers and others. Those involved in the chain of conversion earned commission of up to 40 per cent," the Congress leader claimed.

"Anybody who can identify the person in the video will be given a cash reward of Rs 1 lakh by the Congress party," he said, adding that the BJP government had not bothered to probe the video.

The video was first released at a press conference on March 26. Hitting back at the time, Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said that the Congress was bereft of real issues and was therefore leaning on "fakery".