{"id":32769,"date":"2024-04-06T22:02:52","date_gmt":"2024-04-07T05:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=32769"},"modified":"2024-04-06T22:12:35","modified_gmt":"2024-04-07T05:12:35","slug":"indian-politics-roiled-as-huge-donations-are-linked-to-investigated-firms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/04\/06\/indian-politics-roiled-as-huge-donations-are-linked-to-investigated-firms\/","title":{"rendered":"Indian politics roiled as huge donations are linked to investigated firms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Gerry Shih<\/a> and Anant Gupta<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 29, 2024 at 2:00 a.m. EDT (WashingtonPost.com_<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NEW DELHI \u2014 Mahendra Kumar Jalan was an Indian millionaire with a diversified portfolio of food-processing plants, dairy farms and commercial real estate. As he faced scrutiny from the Indian government\u2019s financial crimes investigators in 2019, he began to put money in something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jalan\u2019s companies confidentially donated millions to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi\u2019s Bharatiya Janata Party, newly released records show. Jalan eventually gifted a total of $42 million to the BJP while he was under federal investigation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jalan\u2019s case was one of many subplots that have burst into public view and roiled Indian politics and business after the Indian Supreme Court forced a state-owned bank to disclose the buyers and recipients of \u201celectoral bonds,\u201d an arrangement introduced in 2017 that allowed companies to give unlimited campaign contributions under a cloak of confidentiality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resulting data dump has provided a rare glimpse into the machinery of Indian politics, revealing how $2 billion has been secretly funneled by Indian companies into political parties since 2018, with roughly half going toward the ruling BJP. And the disclosures have caused a public furor just weeks before the country votes in a national election that political scientists predict could be the world\u2019s most expensive, at a cost of $15 billion, outstripping even the expected price tag of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many instances, the records show, Indian companies gave donations just as they received major government contracts \u2014 a familiar practice around the world. But there was a more striking pattern: Almost half of the top 30 corporate donors were facing government investigations around the time they purchased electoral bonds. The unsettling conclusion reached by Indian political observers is that either Indian business titans have been regularly seeking to bribe their way out of trouble \u2014 or the BJP-controlled government has been using investigative agencies to extort them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Neelanjan Sircar, an expert on Indian politics at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi, said Indian political parties have been known for decades to \u201cweaponize their enforcement and policing capabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhere things have changed in the last 10 years is that the tools of repression and harassment through financial investigations has strengthened,\u201d he said. \u201cEven if quid quo pro cannot be proven legally, the new data is, at a minimum, consistent with the idea that money is being given by businesses to prevent further legal action by agencies under government control.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the BJP was hardly the only party that raked in electoral bonds, the disclosures have sharpened questions about the health of the world\u2019s largest democracy and whether April\u2019s elections \u2014 in which Modi is expected to clinch a third term \u2014 will be considered fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the campaign season has heated up in recent weeks, the Modi government has arrested several opposition leaders on graft charges and frozen large sums of money in the bank accounts of the biggest opposition party, the Indian National Congress. Now, Modi\u2019s critics say, the recently unveiled donation data shows that the ruling party holds an unfair advantage in the fundraising race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Atishi, a minister of the opposition Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) that rules New Delhi and Punjab state, likened the campaign contributions to \u201cprotection money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like a 1980s Bollywood movie where the Bombay don sends his street goons to say, \u2018You pay us and nothing will happen to you,\u2019\u201d said Atishi, who goes by one name. \u201cElections were designed so that no ruling party could exercise its existing authority to keep winning elections, but this framework is being dismantled piece by piece.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Of the $1.5 billion in electoral bonds purchased between April 2019 and this January, the BJP received $728 million, exceeding what the next seven parties received combined. Its overall financial advantage is expected to be even larger, because the electoral bonds account for just a fraction of total campaign financing, with far more coming in the form of cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mounting criticism has forced the BJP, which usually banks on Modi\u2019s clean and business-friendly image, to respond. At a campaign rally, Modi said that he remained committed to rooting out corruption and that his investigative agencies were pursuing cases without ulterior motives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the opposition feels we are misusing central agencies, they should go to the courts instead of crying foul in front of the media,\u201d BJP spokeswoman Shazia Ilmi told The Washington Post. \u201cWe are the biggest party in the country, so it is obvious why more people bet on us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be sure, corruption has been endemic in Indian politics long before Modi rose to power in 2014. In 2017, Modi\u2019s finance minister, Arun Jaitley, proposed the electoral bond plan in response to the influx of untraceable cash in elections. But a group of concerned citizens calling themselves the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), along with Common Cause India and a communist party, filed lawsuits that year challenging it, arguing that anonymous bonds would in fact degrade political transparency, not improve it. In January of this year, the Supreme Court sided with them and ordered the transaction details revealed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jagdeep Chhokar, a retired management professor whois part of ADR, called for an independent investigation into how money and favors have been traded in recent years. \u201cQuid quo pro is frowned upon in most countries,\u201d he said. \u201cBut in India, it had been given a cloak of legality. Now, that has come off.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Already, Indian political researchers and journalists in recent days have uncovered a long list of what they call questionable donations that implicated not just the BJP but many of its rival parties, and involved energy tycoons and telecom conglomerates, engineering firms and a \u201clottery king.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was Sarath Chandra Reddy, a pharmaceutical businessman who was accused by federal investigators in 2022 of bribing the AAP in exchange for liquor licenses. Days after Reddy was taken into custody, donation records showed, he bought the first tranche of $6.6 million in bonds that he would eventually gift the BJP.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reddy was later pardoned. He became the star witness in the Modi government\u2019s case against the AAP, paving the way for the arrest of several AAP leaders. Arvind Kejriwal, a key opposition figure, was jailed last week<\/a> just as he was preparing to hit the campaign trail. Deepti Kshatri, a spokeswoman for Reddy\u2019s company Aurobindo Pharma, did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other major political donors have included Qwik Supply Chain, an obscure Mumbai firm that shared key personnel and email addresses with the Reliance conglomerate owned by Asia\u2019s richest man, Mukesh Ambani. Qwik reported little profit in its quarterly reports but donated $50 million to the BJP, records show. A Reliance spokesman said Qwik is \u201cnot a subsidiary of any Reliance entity\u201d but did not answer questions about the conglomerate\u2019s relationship with the donor firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underscoring how widespread the financing practice had become, the top purchaser of electoral bonds turned out to be a gambling mogul based in Tamil Nadu state who lavished money not on BJP, but on its smaller rivals. Santiago \u201cLottery King\u201d Martin, who has faced charges of bribery, fraud and land seizure in multiple states, gave $60 million each to the Trinamool Congress party in West Bengal and Martin\u2019s local Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party, and just $12 million to Modi\u2019s party.Martin\u2019s corporate secretary did not respond to requests for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, there was Jalan, who turned a modest steel trading business into a sprawling conglomerate that included eastern India\u2019s top dairy company. The businessman was well-known in Kolkata for his 11th-floor penthouse \u2014 featuring a 4,700-square-foot rooftop garden with bonsai trees and cactuses \u2014 and his proximity to the local Trinamool Congress. But in 2019, after he came under official scrutiny for alleged money laundering, he started giving generously and became the BJP\u2019s bigger donor of electoral bonds during that year\u2019s national election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suparna Mucadum, a spokesperson for Jalan\u2019s Keventer Group, did not respond to emails seeking comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Karishma Mehrotra contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Gerry Shih and Anant Gupta March 29, 2024 at 2:00 a.m. EDT (WashingtonPost.com_ NEW DELHI \u2014 Mahendra Kumar Jalan was an Indian millionaire with a diversified portfolio of food-processing plants, dairy farms and commercial real estate. As he faced scrutiny from the Indian government\u2019s financial crimes investigators in 2019, he began to… Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32769"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32769"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32774,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32769\/revisions\/32774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}