Indian graft in Swiss Alps

There is a certain unanimity in the country about the claim that government makes compromises on corruption. The object of these compromises is often the corporate sector, which is sitting on the country’s scarce natural resources and encashes them illegally. The anti-corruption activist-turned-politician Arvind Kejriwal’s most recent expose traces the path of how the politician-corporate nexus in India is carried out in actual terms. As is his style, he has taken on the rich and powerful again, named them and established the connection among them. Incidentally, Kejriwal’s expose is based on a document that the government of India possesses as a classified document. President Pranab Mukherjee received information from the Swiss authorities as the then finance minister about the Indians who held accounts in the Swiss branch of HSBC Bank. Despite repeated demands, Mukherjee chose to keep the document a secret. So much so that he did not even share it with Parliament. The government also rejected the Bharatiya Janata Party leader Varun Gandhi’s RTI request in this matter.
        
Unfortunately for the country, the names are a bit too familiar and too important to be ignored. Mukesh Ambani and Anil Ambani are there, so is a close confidante of the Gandhi family, Annu Tandon and her husband among others. The first two names crop up almost every time there is a mention of corporate corruption and the politician-corporate nexus. The Ambanis have their personal money stashed in the opaque bank accounts of a Swiss bank not just in their names but also in the names of their many little-known companies. The senior Ambani is also accused of resisting a CAG’s enquiry into its gas-extraction contract in the KG basin, which has one of the riches gas reserves in the country. Put the two things together and you know why corruption invariably leads the cash flow out of the country to certain set destinations in Swiss banks. Of course, all of this is still in the realm of speculation and allegations, but they are speculations that the public mood seems to invoke every time a Kejriwal exposes corrupt deeds of the powerful. The government can deal in two ways with it: one, it can keep quiet, as usually, hoping for another scandal to die down and disappear from public memory. The other way is that it can take these documents seriously and act against the people who are named in them. But, definitely not like what Mukherjee did. He took nominal action against the accused, treated some of them as tax defaulters and let them go with a fine. Anyway, he never touched the big players. Hopefully, this will change this time.