Subramanian Swamy sniffs mining scam in Goa

PANAJI: Anti-corruption crusader and Janata Party (JP) president Subramanian Swamy on Thursday referred to a ‘mining scam’ in Goa and said that when present homeminister P Chidambaram was the finance minister between 2004 and 2007, he fiddled with export duties on mining ore so that mining companies like Vedanta reaped huge profits.

On a visit to Goa, Swamy addressed mediapersons and said the scam is worth around 16,000 crore. When he gets more time from his present engagement with the 2G scam, he will pursue the issue against Chidambaram, Swamy said.

The JP chief praised the movement spearheaded by Anna Hazare and expressed his willingness to join it, but said that Hazare and his team were focused totally on one piece of legislation – the Jan Lokpal bill.

Swamy said that he has proved that even without the Jan Lokpal bill, his Action Committee Against Corruption in India (ACACI) can get results, as evident from the results in the 2G scam so far.

He said the ACACI is now focusing on money stashed abroad. It has already given a 15-page complaint to the CBI asking it to file an FIR. “But the CBI has not filed the FIR even after one month. If and when it does, the ACACI will take the FIR to a criminal court and get a letter-rogatory. With that letter, the ACACI will go abroad and obtain details about the money stashed in foreign countries,” Swamy said.

He said that while the ACACI has provided names of politicians who have such foreign bank accounts, the French government has provided 788 names of Indians and the German government provided 16 such names.

“But the government of India is not prosecuting these people. If the CBI does not file the FIR by January 1, I will go to the Supreme Court asking it to direct the CBI to do so, like I did in the Raja case when the Prime Minister did not give me sanction,” Swamy said.

He said he has filed 17 files corruption cases against Chidambaram. These include irregularities in stock market and various other cases. “But my busy engagement with present cases is preventing me from pursuing these,” Swamy said.

“Although the ACACI has not been able to align with the Anna Hazare movement, partly because the Hazare team does not want to align with a political party, the ACACI may align with Baba Ramdev soon as he is doing a fantastic job of raising awareness against corruption in India, said the JP president.

Source : profitscam