Whose brain behind Oil for Food Scam?

Natwar, the self styled Shankar is going to open slowly his third eye by attacking Sonia Gandhi. Natwar Singh has become the first party insider in recent years who has dared to target Sonia Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi initiated the Oil for Food transaction as an opposition leader being the president of Congress with the first conversations with former Iraqi vice-president Taha Ramadan who visited India on November 27, 2000, and Natwar Singh accompanied Congress president Sonia Gandhi to the meeting with him.

Sonia Gandhi is mastermind behind the Oil for Food scam. The story, as unveiled by Justice Pathak, begins when an official delegation of the Congress party led by Natwar, then chairman of its foreign affairs department, went to Iraq in January, 2001 to express solidarity with the people of Iraq.
Party leaders A R Antulay, P Shiv Shanker and Aniel Matherani, secretary of the department, were part of the delegation whose visit was approved by the party President Sonia Gandhi. Natwar had met the Iraqi Oil Minister Dr Amer Mohammed Rasheed on January 22, 2001 along with Sehgal and Jagat, the report said. Naturally travel costs of the delegation were borne by the Congress Party.

Natwar Singh highlights following points in his draft of the parliament submission:

(1) The Congress president is fully aware of everything. Not a leaf moves in the Congress banyan tree without her knowledge and approva. He had visited Baghdad in January 2001 as the leader of an official Congress party delegation. Mrs Gandhi gave me a letter of introduction to President Saddam Hussein which... I delivered to the deputy prime minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, on my arrival in Baghdad,” Nat-war Singh said. Natwar’s grumpy face shows as if Natwar holds a"trump-card" to take Sonia bogie by surprise!


(2) "Mrs Gandhi gave me a letter of introduction to President Saddam Hussain which... I delivered to the deputy Prime Minister, Mr Tariq Aziz, on my arrival in Baghdad.

"We would like to know from the government whether the Pathak Authority and the Enforcement Directorate have made enquiries from the Congress president (as was in the case of Natwar Singh and his family)."

(3) On Nov 11, 2005, the Pathak Authority was constituted, whose terms of reference on the substantive side were to look at the two oil contracts, one in the name of the Congress party and another in the name of Natwar Singh, and to prove where the money trail led to. But without investigating Congress affairs in Oil for Food scam, Pathak committee gave clean chit to the Congress. The selected contents of the report were leaked from PMO. Why enquiry of this has been dropped by the Govt.? It means if nuke secret leaks in future then it would not be enquired as nuke leakages at the time of other past PMOs.

(4) Justice Pathak's conclusions dealing with the contract in which I was mentioned as the non-contractual beneficiary and the contract in which the Congress party was mentioned as a non-contractual beneficiary are at best questionable. He has not explained why I would ask for one contract in my name and another in the name of the Congress party

(5) Paragraph 15.8 of the Pathak Authority report clearly states that on August 21, 2001 the Executive Director, SOMO wrote to the Iraqi Oil Minister seeking the approval of the allocation of one million barrels of crude oil "for the benefit of the Indian Congress Party". After the approval by the Iraqi Oil minister, this contract was also sent for the approval of the United Nations Overseer. Justice Pathak then says enigmatically, "how the name of Indian Congress Party came to be mentioned in this letter is not known". But this is precisely what he was required to find out.

Iraq based NRI businessman Haridarshan Singh Majie, whose company has been based in Iraq for 30 years, claimed that Saddam forwarded Ms Gandhi’s letter to the Iraq oil ministry and it was part of record on the basis of which the Volcker Committee prepared its report listing Mr Singh and the Congress as beneficiaries.

Congress general secretary of that time Ambika Soni read out in the Rajya Sabha the two letters that were delivered by Natwar, who headed the foreign affairs department of the AICC. Natwar had gone to Iraq at the invitation of Tariq Aziz.In the first letter, dated January 17, 2001, Sonia referred to the old ties between the Congress and the Baath Party, recalling that Baath representatives had been attending plenary sessions of the AICC. She also mentioned the cordial relations which India had with Iraq under the government headed by "my husband'' (Rajiv Gandhi). The Congress president, in her letter, stressed that India followed a foreign policy determined by a "national consensus.'' Expressing the ``anguish of Congress party over the situation'' in Iraq, she hoped the UN sanctions against Baghdad would be withdrawn enabling it to rejoin the international community. India, she wrote to Saddam, always stood for meeting Iraq's humanitarian and infrastructural requirements. In the second letter, dated April 24 2001, Sonia congratulated Saddam on his 64th birthday on April 28 and reiterated the points she had made in the earlier letter.

* Dr. Subramanyam Swamy reported on 16-12-2005:

(1) In the matter of bribes collected from Iraq by Congress Party, I have now verified that part of the ill-gotten money ended up in HSBC bank in New York (Yonkers branch) in the account of Century Development Group, Inc. account number 652-72521-0. This is a benami account of Ms.Sonia Gandhi operated on her behalf by Zach Thomas, the New York based brother-in-law of Ms.Sonia Gandhi’s Man Friday Vincent George.

(2) Another lead that connects Ms.Sonia Gandhi to illegal payment in the Iraqi oil allotments of the Saddam Hussein regime, is the Letter of Credit issued by Vitol Ltd. In the name of President, Congress Party, 24 Akbar Road, New Delhi. That such a Letter of Credit was issued can be inferred by Table 3 & 4 in the Volcker Committee Report. According to these Tables, Contract No.M/10/57 was allotted in the name of “Congress Party” of which Ms.Sonia Gandhi is President (Annexure 2.) The Vitol company was the underlying financier and had opened a letter of credit N731924 (Annexure 5.) No.L/C can be opened without identifying the parties to the contract. According to my information, the Vitol company Mumbai office in Maker Towers V had contacted the Congress Party before issuing the L/C (Annexure 6).
* However, it is reasonable to infer that there was some talk about the allocation of oil since on the very next date i.e. on January 23, 2001, Jagat Singh and Sehgal, along with Shri Matherani went to the building of the State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO) where they were explained about how the Iraqi officials in the ministry of oil went about allocating oil to companies under the oil-for-food program”, the report said.

* Who is Mathrani? A Congressman, then in the foreign affairs cell of the party under Natwar; then the Indian Ambassador to Croatia - a job he has surely lost due to his statement related to Oil for Food transaction.

Mathrani flew to Amman, Jordan on January 18, 2001, the same day that Natwar's son Jagat Singh went there. Records show that both flew Royal Jordan Airlines. Matherani went back to Jordan in April 2001. Mathrani disclosed to the media how he had informed the Congress in November about the presence of Mr Jagat Singh and Mr Andaleeb Sehgal in the Congress delegation to Iraq.Matherani in his interview to the India Today said that "it was hogwash to say that Natwar and the congress did not know about vouchers."

Jagat Singh son of Natwar Singh was in Iraq as a member of Youth Congress delegation as per the introductory letter of then Youth Congress President Surjewala. His letter is a document of Pathak report.

By Premendra Agrawal