By: V SUNDARAM
http://newstodaynet.com/col.php?section=20&catid=33&id=8347
Saturday, 14 June, 2008 , 07:55 PM
It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action, it begets a calamitous necessity of going on’ _Thomas Paine (1737-1809)
People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception’ _Lord Disraely
The Story of Sonia’s political fraud and corruption is a movement and not a condition: A Journey and not a harbor. It reads like a crime thriller of Sherlock Holmes. I am making this observation after taking due note of all the clinching points and arguments made by Dr.Subramanian Swamy in his brilliant article titled `Do you know your Sonia?’ Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) had persons like Sonia Gandhi in view when he wrote `Every Saint has a past and every sinner a future’. I am summarizing below Dr.Swamy’s main points and arguments.
1. Sonia Gandhi never studied in any college. She did go to a Catholic Nun run seminary-school called Maria Ausiliatrice in Giaveno [15 kms from her adopted home town of Orbassabo]. Poverty those days forced young Italian girls to go to such missionary institutions and then in their teens go to UK to get jobs as cleaning maids, waitresses and au pair. The Mainos were poor those days. Her father was a mason and mother a share-cropper. Sonia thus went to the town of Cambridge and first learnt some English in a teaching shop called Lennox School [which has since 1970 been wound up]. That is all her `education’ is—learnt enough English language to get domestic help jobs. But in Indian society education is highly valued. Thus, to fool the Indian public, Sonia Gandhi willfully fibbed about her qualifications in Parliamentary records [which is a Breach of Ethics and Rules] and in a sworn affidavit [which is criminal offence under IPC, severe enough to disqualify her from being MP]. This offence has been viewed as stale by our disgraceful Supreme Court of India! To quote Dr.Swamy’s words in this context: `In popular parlance, this is called 420 or 10 `numberi’ [not to be confused with 10 Janpath]. Ms. Sonia Gandhi upon learning enough English became a waitress in Varsity Restaurant in Cambridge town. She first met Rajiv when he came to the restaurant in 1965. Rajiv was a student in the University, but could not cope with the academic rigour for long. So he had to depart in 1966 for London where he was briefly in Imperial College of Engineering as a student. Sonia too moved to London, and according my information, got a job with an outfit run by Salman Thassir, a debonair Pakistani based in Lahore, and who has an export-import company headquartered in Dubai but who spends most of his time in London. This fits the profile of an ISI functionary. Obviously, Sonia made enough money in this job to loan Rajiv funds in London, who was obviously living beyond his allowances. [Indira Gandhi herself expressed anguish to me on this score in late 1965 when she invited me to a private tea at the Guest House in Brandeis University]. Rajiv’s letters to Sanjay, who was also in London then, clearly indicate that he was in financial debt to Sonia because he requested Sanjay who obviously had more access to money, to pay off the debt. However, Rajiv was not the only friend Sonia was seeing those days. Madhavrao Scindia and a German by name Stiegler are worth mentioning as other good friends of Sonia. Madhavrao’s friendship continued even after Sonia’s marriage to Rajiv. Scindia in 1982 was involved in a traffic accident near IIT, Delhi main gate while driving a car at 2 AM. Sonia was the only other passenger. Both were badly injured. A student of IIT who was burning midnight oil was out for a cup of coffee. He picked them up from the car, hired an auto rickshaw and sent an injured Sonia to Mrs Indira Gandhi’s house since she insisted in not going to a hospital. Madhavrao had broken a leg and in too much pain to make any demand. The Delhi Police who had arrived a little after Sonia had left the scene took him to hospital. In later years, Madhavrao had become privately critical of Sonia, and told some close friends about his apprehensions about Sonia. It is a pity that he died in mysterious circumstances in an air crash’.
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2. The circumstance under which Rajiv hastily married Sonia in a Church in Orbassano is controversial but that was his personal matter that has no public significance. But what is of public significance is that Indira Gandhi who was initially dead set against the marriage for reasons known to her, relented to hold a registry marriage with Hindu ceremonial trappings in New Delhi only after the pro-Soviet T.N. Kaul prevailed upon her to accept the marriage in `the larger interest of cementing Indo-Soviet Friendship’. Kaul would not have intervened unless the Soviet Union had asked him to. Such has been the extensive patronage from the beginning extended to Sonia Gandhi from the Soviets.
3. When this son of a Prime Minister of India dates a girl in London, the KGB which values Indo-Soviet relations, obviously would go to investigate her to know more about her family antecedents. That is how KGB found out that Sonia was the daughter of Stefano, their old reliable Italian contact. Thus, Sonia with Rajiv as husband meant deeper access to the household of the Indian Prime Minister. Hence cementing the Rajiv-Sonia relations was in the Soviet national interest and they went to work on it. And they did through their then existing moles in the Indira Gandhi camp.
Sonia’s family has $2 billion in secret Swiss accounts. Published in Schweizer Illustriet
11/1991
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4. After her marriage to Rajiv, the Soviet connection with the Mainos was fortified and nurtured by generous financial help through commissions and kickbacks on every Indo-Soviet trade deal and defence purchases. According to the respected Swiss magazine, Schweitzer Illustrate [November 1991 issue], Rajiv Gandhi had about $ 2 billion in numbered Swiss bank accounts, which Sonia inherited upon his assassination. Dr. Yevgenia Albats, Ph.D [Harvard], is a noted Russian scholar and journalist, and was a member of the KGB Commission set up by President Yeltsin in August 1991. She was privy to the Soviet intelligence files that documented these deals and KGB facilitation of the same. In her book, `The State Within a State, The KGB in Soviet Union’, she even gives the file numbers of such intelligence files, which can now be accessed by any Indian government through a formal request to the Kremlin.
1. The Russian Government in 1992 was confronted by the Dr. Albats’ disclosure; they confirmed it through their official spokesperson to the press [which was published in Hindu in 1992], defending such financial payments as necessary in `Soviet ideological interest’. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, things changed for Sonia Gandhi. Her patrons evaporated. The rump that became Russia was in a financial mess and disorder. So Sonia Gandhi became a supporter of another communist country i.e. China, to the annoyance of the Russians. The national security ramification of this `annoyance’ is now significant: The President of Russia today is Putin, a former dyed-in-the-wool KGB officer. Upon Dr. Manmohan Singh’s government taking office, Russia called back it’s career diplomat Ambassador in New Delhi and immediately posted as the new Ambassador a person who was the KGB station chief in New Delhi during the 1970s. In view of Dr. Albats confirmed revelation, it stands to reason that the new Ambassador would have known first hand about Sonia’s connections with the KGB. He may have in fact been her `controller’. The new Indian government, which is de facto Sonia’s, cannot afford to annoy him or even disregard Russian demands coming from him? They will obviously placate him so as not to risk exposure. Is this not a major national security risk and a delicate matter for the nation? Here again, Dr.Swamy speaks like a statesman: `Of course, all Indians would like good normal and healthy relations with Russia. Who can forget their assistance to us in times of need? Today’s Russia is the residual legatee of that Soviet Union which helped India. But just because of that, should we tolerate those in our government set up having clandestine links with a foreign spy agency? In the United States, the government did not tolerate an American spying for Israel even though the two countries are as close as any two countries can be. National security and friendship are as different as chalk and cheese’.
2. In December 2001, Dr.Subramanian Swamy filed a Writ Petition in the Delhi High Court with the photocopies of the KGB documents, and sought a CBI investigation, which the Vajpayee Government was refusing. Earlier, Minister of State for CBI, Vasundara Raje [now Rajasthan CM], on Dr. Swamy’s letter dated March 3, 2001, had ordered the CBI to investigate. But after Sonia Gandhi and her party stalled the proceedings of Parliament on this issue, the then Prime Minister Vajpayee cancelled Vasundara Raje’s direction to the CBI. The Delhi High Court issued a direction to the CBI to ascertain from Russia the truth of Dr.Swamy’s charges. The CBI procrastinated for three years, and finally told the Court that without an FIR registered, the Russians will not entertain any such query. But who stopped the CBI from registering an FIR? This only confirms my settled view that CBI does not mean Central Bureau of Investigation; it only means Criminal Bureau of Insinuation, Indoctrination, Infliction and Intimidation!
After Sonia married Rajiv, she went about minting money with scant regard for Indian laws and treasures. Within a few years the Mainos rose from the depths of dismal poverty to become global billionaires. There was no area that was left out for the rip-off. On November 19, 1974, as a fresh entrant to Parliament, Dr.Subramanian Swamy asked the then Prime Minister Ms. Indira Gandhi on the floor of the House if her daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi was acting as an insurance agent of a public sector insurance company [Oriental Fire & Insurance], giving the Prime Minister’s official residence as her business address, and using undue influence to insure all the officers of the PMO while remaining an Italian citizen [thus violating FERA]? There was uproar in Parliament, but Mrs. Indira Gandhi had no alternative but to beat a honourable retreat. She made a rare admission that Dr. Swamy’s complaint against Sonia was well-founded but added that it was only by mistake, and that Sonia had resigned from her insurance agent status [after Dr.Swamy’s question in Parliament!]. But Sonia was incorrigible. Her contempt for Indian law continued unabated and un-subdued till it has reached gigantic proportions today.
(To be contd…)
(The writer is a retired IAS officer)
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