Agency lists only ` 600- cr of his alleged hawala transactions
THE HASAN Ali case promised to be India’s biggest, most explosive money laundering case.
Instead, it has turned out to be one of the biggest whitewash jobs in the history of the Enforcement Directorate ( ED).
In a complete turnaround from what it threatened to do, the ED has gone out of its way to ensure that those named by Hasan Ali – the man who it claimed was India’s biggest money launderer, catering to India’s rich and powerful – do not even appear in the chargesheet.
The voluminous, 950- page chargesheet – based on which the trial court will actually frame charges against Ali – does not contain the names of any of the major politicians, including several chief ministers, top bureaucrats or industrialists whom ED sources had said Ali had named during his interrogation.
Mail Today had earlier reported that Ali had revealed the names of as many as five former chief ministers alleging that he had laundered money for them.
Three of them were from Maharashtra and two from Andhra Pradesh. The list of those who had routed their ill- gotten wealth through Ali included top bureaucrats from Maharashtra and many film stars, especially from Andhra Pradesh — powerful links which allegedly kept Ali safe for over two decades.
During this period, Ali is said to have accumulated ill- gotten wealth of over ` 36,000 crore, stashed in safe havens abroad.
But in the chargesheet submitted to the sessions court in Mumbai, the ED, while charging Ali under the Money Laundering and Prevention Act, 2002, has shown that Ali’s scam was worth just a few hundred crore rupees.
Instead, the actual crimes with he has been charged largely relate to how the tax cheat had helped illegally sell off the erstwhile Hyderabad Nizam’s jewellery.
“ This is to be expected. Since these ( ED officials) people work under the government you cannot expect them to go and put the names of the politicians. This will happen until they are given freedom and are working under an ombudsman. You put yourself in their place, it is very hard to go against the system,” former top policeman Julio Rebeiro said.
While the ED does mention that Ali has multiple accounts in Singapore and Switzerland, it fails to detail the trail of the remaining amount of black money in Ali’s account. Instead of money laundering, most of the chargesheet is on the Nizam’s jewels, with the ED claiming that Ali had connections with the Nizam’s family and was involved in smuggling out and selling the jewellery.
“ You talk to our superiors, as to why we couldn’t add the names of top politicians and bureaucrats that were told to us. We were told to prepare the chargesheet focusing on Nizam’s jewels and the fake passport and dilute everything else,” said an ED officer on condition of anonymity.
The chargesheet also doesn’t reveal Ali’s monetary transactions or links with international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi and Swiss hotelier Philip Anandraj The probe detailed in the chargesheet accounts only for about ` 600 crore of the ` 36,000 crore worth of deals he is supposed to have entered into.
In his interrogation, Ali had revealed information on as much as ` 1,600 crore of illegal deals — a fact that the ED has also mentioned in its report tabled before the Supreme Court.
However, all that has vanished from the chargesheet.
This is strongly reminiscent of what happened in the Abdul Karim Telgi fake stamp paper case. Back in 2003, Telgi — accused in the ` 43,000 crore fake stamp paper scam — had apparently revealed the names of political biggies, none of which made it to the chargesheet.
Karnataka and Maharashtra politicians — where the scam occurred — were opposed to handing over the investigations to the Special Investigative Team formed by the Bombay High Court. Eventually not a single big political name made it to the chargesheet in that case. Only two lesser known MLAs — one each from Maharashtra and Karnataka — were investigated and arrested.
In Ali’s case too, just two politicians — Bihar Congress politician Amalendu Pandey and the Lieutenant Governor of Puducherry, Iqbal Singh, have been questioned so far. They too, do not figure in the chargesheet.
Former Maharashtra DGP Arvind Inamdar, however, held out hope for a fair investigation. “ This would not be the end, the court can ask for the investigation papers if they feel that the case has not been investigated properly and the court can well hand over the probe to another agency,” he said.
How strong the ED case against Ali actually is can be gauged from the fact that the charges against Ali occupy around 69, pages while the rest is made up by statements from different accused and correspondence, mostly related to Ali’s fake passports.
Not much of this is the ED’s actual investigative report. Another officer associated with the case said that they were back to square one. “ The Supreme Court asked us to investigate. However, we can’t swim with our hands tied.
There were hundreds of phone calls asking us to hush up high profile names.” Reactions are split along party lines. “ Anyone who is in custody can take big names to sensationalise the issue but there is no truth in it,” Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Hussain Dalwai said.
The Opposition Shiv Sena’s Subhash Desai said: “ How can you expect the ED, which works under the Centre, to function independently? This is the same government that declined to reveal the names of those people who have black money abroad to the Supreme Court.” The ED’s sudden about- turn is bound to benefit Ali. On Tuesday, his lawyer filed a bail plea for his client saying the chargesheet had nothing new.
