Thursday, February 28, 2008

CPM and the "only" one crore Bribe

Meet Ex- Deputy General Manager (Marketing) of the Deshabhimani Mr. K.Venugopal, a  close confidant of both CPM Party Secretary Pinarai Vijayan and Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, the Home Minister.

He helped himself with rupees of 1 crore to get a government (i.e. LDF )decision in favour of the some prominent Business persons. Now lets see who are these prominent Business Persons.

The amount was given by LiS, a fraudulent money chain firm. LiS is charged with the criminal offence of cheating the public with money doubling offers and of flouting Reserve Bank regulations. The Kerala police raided office of LiS then sealed its offices. Prosecution procedures were also started. In a span of 3 years before its closure, this  firm had amassed a fabulous sum of 600 crore from the public. However, Surprisingly the case against LiS, investigations and litigation proceedings, all proceeded sluggishly. In a few months of LDF rule, the investigation officer was changed more than once, each time the charge being passed over to lower ranked officers. Even the investigating officer was attacked in the court premises reportedly by the juniors of the advocate of the defendant, when the former was going to the court to hand over the case file, asked by the latter. The advocate of LiS was M. K. Damodaran, who had been the Advocate General during the former LDF ministry, under E.K.Nayanar and thus, obviously a  close associate of CPI(M) leaders and the party. While the case with Damodaran acting as defence counsel was heading towards a standstill, things took a different turn. Not long after LiS had been closed and sealed, another firm by name ‘Jyothis’ came into existence almost  under the  same proprietorship and started operations in the same line as that of LiS. Within the last 4 months, ‘Jyothis’ has accumulated deposits worth Rs 10 crore and has made its mark as having put an insertion on the front cover of the DYFI’s organ in Malayalam.

It is so palpably clear that a firm could not have come to these points without high-level administrative and party support, that the government is compelled to close down ‘Jyothis’ too.

So this was the episode of LiS, the firm from which the CPI(M)’s party daily functionary,  venugopal, took a bribe of only rupees one crore.

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