| |
THE NATION
SWAMY RIDES
AGAIN
Cambridge Conspiracy
The
maverick charges that Sonia had an agenda independent of Rajiv
By Ashok Malik
|
|
|
|
|
BACK IN BUSINESS: Swamy is in the
public eye again
|
Subramanian Swamy
is the ultimate hot potato in Delhi's political hothouse-few want to touch
him, fewer still want to take him on. Over the past week, the Janata Party
president haunted old friends and foes again when his "suggested
charge- sheet against Ms Sonia Gandhi, leader of Opposition, Lok Sabha"
erupted into a political crisis. In his letter of March 3, Swamy had asked
Minister of State for Personnel Vasundhra Raje to direct the CBI to look
into his allegations. While the resultant storm is well-known (see accompanying
story), what precisely are Swamy's charges?
Swamy begins with a relatively innocuous preamble
that warns "Sonia Gandhi may well turn out to be India's (Alberto)
Fujimori", a reference to the disgraced former president of Peru
who fled to Japan and (re)-claimed citizenship of his ancestral country.
Swamy rebuts Sonia's claim that she was "educated in Cambridge University".
Rather, "Ms Gandhi had gone to the town of Cambridge to learn English
in an unrecognised teaching shop." Explaining his elaborate thesis
to India Today, Swamy points out that Sonia met Rajiv Gandhi in Cambridge
in 1963 and got married only in 1968. A good part of the intervening period
was "spent in London", where a KGB bond, Swami believes, was
either created or strengthened.
|
|
|
|
A "KGB document"
of 1989 talks of payments to "R. Gandhi". Swamy insists
this was Rahul, not Rajiv.
|
|
The one solid clue on the KGB hand that Swamy
offers is an extract from Yevgenia Albats' The State Within a State: The
KGB and Its Hold on Russia-Past, Present, and Future. Page 223 quotes
Viktor Chebrikov, then chief of the KGB, as telling a Communist Party
of the Soviet Union (CPSU) committee, "The USSR KGB maintains contact
with the son of Premier Minister Rajiv Gandhi [of India] ... R. Gandhi
expresses deep gratitude for benefits accruing to the prime minister's
family from the commercial dealings of an Indian firm he controls in cooperation
with Soviet foreign trade organisations. R. Gandhi reports confidentially
that a substantial portion of the funds obtained through this channel
are used to support the party of R. Gandhi."
Swamy's take is that the "R. Gandhi"
refers to Rahul Gandhi, "the son" who at the time of the 1989
election was a student at Harvard University-where, coincidentally, Swamy
is a visiting professor. Swamy's "investigations also reveal"
that the "KGB money came in through the Mainos" to finance certain
"pro-Sonia candidates". Rajiv, says Swamy, had no idea about
this KGB operation.
|
THE YO-YO MAN
|
|
|
VAJPAYEE: Was Swamy's leader in
Jana Sangh in 1970s. Post-1977, Swamy levelled personal charges.
CHANDRA SHEKHAR: Friend in 1977,
rival for Janata presidency five years later. Buddy again in 1990-91.
JAYALALITHA: Swamy accused her
of corruption in 1996, then allied with her in 1998. Now fallen
out.
RAJIV: Sworn foe in 1984-89. Swamy
then became a friend and brokered a deal with Chandra Shekhar.
SONIA: Swamy called her to his
tea party in 1998, tried to befriend his "friend's widow".
Now he is accusatory.
|
|
It is a theory some would call far-fetched. A
more straightforward implication of Chebrikov's statement would be that
the Congress received money from the KGB. Contacted in New York, Catherine
Fitzpatrick, who translated Albats' book into English, advocates caution,
"You have to be careful with this. What she (Albats) has is a bunch
of documents not from the KGB itself but by the KGB, from the CPSU and
Central Committee archive ... These documents involve the KGB reporting
to their 'civilian masters', the CPSU, and we can't be sure that they
didn't exaggerate their accomplishments in such memos, as one might to
any boss." Nor does Fitzpatrick want to hazard a guess on the identity
of "R": was it father or son?
Swamy then trains his guns on Rajiv's assassins.
He accuses Sonia of being soft on the Tamil Tigers, the PMK and the "pro-LTTE
and secessionist Dravida Kazhagam". LTTE cadre also acted as "runners",
Swamy told India Today, to facilitate a smuggling operation. He points
to a CBI inquiry of 1993 into a consignment originating from Chennai port
that violated the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972. The artefacts
were, the CBI recorded, meant for one "Guide Zanderige" of Verona,
Italy. This man, Swamy says, is an employee of the Mainos and was procuring
goods for "Etnica in Rivolta or Ganpati in Orbassano", shops
"owned by her (Sonia's) family". In support, he produces a report
by a Hindu correspondent who visited the region.
Swamy also charges "affidavits filed in
a Malaysian court ... establish that Sonia's sister Anushka and her husband
(now ex) Walter Vinci were beneficiaries from the receipts of Quattrocchi
from Bofors". After Sonia's wedding, "the Maino family became
in just 25 years the richest family of Italy with net worth ... in 1991
(of) about $ 2.7 billion". The Forbes billionaire list for 1991,
however, records the Agnelli family, which owns Fiat, as Italy's wealthiest
at $ 4.3 billion.
Swamy's final salvo is a letter to the Law Ministry
seeking action against Sonia-who he says voted in the 1980 election but
became a naturalised Indian only in 1983-under Section 10(2)(b) of the
Citizenship Act. The clause allows for "deprivation of citizenship"
if the "citizen has shown himself to be disloyal ... towards the
Constitution".
Whatever the future of the chargesheet, for
the moment Swamy-who reminds you he also made the initial allegations
against R.K. Hegde (for tapping phones) and Jayalalitha-is in the limelight.
Either his opponents in the BJP face the ignominy of using his letter
to attack the Congress or India's two largest parties unite to take on
one man. No wonder he's grinning.
|
|
METRO TODAY
Web
Exclusives
