Size doesn’t always matter in politics, as former Goa Chief Minister Digambar Kamat is finding out.
Kamat presided over a Congress regime whose term saw a mammoth Rs 35,000 crore illegal mining scam. But what has finally got him in the dock is a smallish Rs 6.23 crore bribery scandal involving New Jersey-based consultancy firm Louis Berger.
According to the Goa police, the bribe was allegedly given to Kamat, former minister Churchill Alemao and Goa officials in charge of a Rs 1,031 crore water and sewage management project funded by a Japanese government agency.
Both Kamat and Alemao have pleaded innocence in hurried interactions with the media before and after their questioning by the Goa Police Crime Branch over the last two days.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party is patting itself for the implied bravado in the case. For the past three years, while leading the ruling dispensation, it has been unable to nail a single senior Congress leader in the scams it exposed while in Opposition. Now, it feels it has struck gold.
When asked to react to the Crime Branch’s summons to Kamat and Alemao, a visibly beaming Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said on Tuesday: “They are not summoned. They have been invited”. He was less cordial when he spoke on the issue in the Goa legislative assembly on Wednesday. “Those who are involved in corruption at the cost of state would not be pardoned. It is our duty to help police in investigation and we should encourage it.”
The money trail
The Louis Berger international bribery scandal hit the media last week after two former senior vice presidents of the consultancy firm pleaded guilty in a New Jersey District Court to offering bribes of $3.9 million to secure contracts in countries such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kuwait.
While the settlement announced by the US Justice Department did not identify the politicians and officials who were offered bribes, the documents revealed that $976,630 was paid in bribes during 2009-2010 to a Goa minister and other officials.
Louis Berger was part of a consortium that won a contract to execute a water and sewerage project in Goa worth Rs 1,031 crore funded by the Japan International Co-Operation Agency. This agency was cleared in 2010 by the Congress-led coalition government, when Kamat was chief minister and Churchill Alemao was Public Works Department minister.
While Alemao maintained he is “innocent”, Kamat said on Wednesday: “I am firm about what I have been saying on day one. I have done nothing wrong. The JICA file did not come to me”.
The police have arrested JICA project director Anand Wachasundar and claim to have established the money trail from former Louis Berger officials to Kamat and Alemao, via hawala.
Political rewards
The bribery scandal has worked as a catalyst both in Goa and national politics.
The BJP believes that the grand old party’s slow resurgence can be beaten off with its own corruption-ridden past. That is why the saffron party is vigorously talking up the graft scandal involving former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister PK Thungon, now sentenced to jail, and the fresh allegations against Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. That is also why in Goa it has seized upon the Louis Berger scam, which has also brought Assam’s Congress government under the scanner.
As the BJP revels in the Louis Berger controversy, the largely ineffective Goa Congress has found itself in a deeper hole.
In 2012, a massive loss in the assembly elections reduced the party to nine MLAs in the 40-member House. One of these nine MLAs, Mauvin Godinho, is now the party’s severest critic, while another, Atanasio Monserrate, was sacked for anti-party activity. The party’s topmost leaders are not even trying to contest the bribery allegations. “Let there be a probe. We are ready for it,” Leader of Opposition Pratapsing Rane told Scroll.in.
The Louis Berger episode has also proved that Kamat, a member of the influential Gaud Saraswat Brahmin caste, is fallible despite having better friends in the BJP than in the Congress (he was once a BJP minister). Thus far, the BJP government had shown reluctance in acting against him in the mining scam. In fact, for three long years now, a Special Investigation Team had been trying to fix responsibility after a judicial commission indicted Kamat while exposing the mining scandal.
A state BJP leader on condition of anonymity explained why the BJP government, which had been reluctant to prosecute Congressmen linked in official reports and formal complaints to drug trade, casino licensing scams, PWD scams and the mining scam, is moving swiftly in the Louis Berger case.
“We [the local BJP unit] are out of the decision-making chain in the Louis Berger case,” the BJP leader said. “These are directions from the party’s national headquarters with specific instructions to spare none.”
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Kamat presided over a Congress regime whose term saw a mammoth Rs 35,000 crore illegal mining scam. But what has finally got him in the dock is a smallish Rs 6.23 crore bribery scandal involving New Jersey-based consultancy firm Louis Berger.
According to the Goa police, the bribe was allegedly given to Kamat, former minister Churchill Alemao and Goa officials in charge of a Rs 1,031 crore water and sewage management project funded by a Japanese government agency.
Both Kamat and Alemao have pleaded innocence in hurried interactions with the media before and after their questioning by the Goa Police Crime Branch over the last two days.
Meanwhile, the Bharatiya Janata Party is patting itself for the implied bravado in the case. For the past three years, while leading the ruling dispensation, it has been unable to nail a single senior Congress leader in the scams it exposed while in Opposition. Now, it feels it has struck gold.
When asked to react to the Crime Branch’s summons to Kamat and Alemao, a visibly beaming Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar said on Tuesday: “They are not summoned. They have been invited”. He was less cordial when he spoke on the issue in the Goa legislative assembly on Wednesday. “Those who are involved in corruption at the cost of state would not be pardoned. It is our duty to help police in investigation and we should encourage it.”
The money trail
The Louis Berger international bribery scandal hit the media last week after two former senior vice presidents of the consultancy firm pleaded guilty in a New Jersey District Court to offering bribes of $3.9 million to secure contracts in countries such as India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Kuwait.
While the settlement announced by the US Justice Department did not identify the politicians and officials who were offered bribes, the documents revealed that $976,630 was paid in bribes during 2009-2010 to a Goa minister and other officials.
Louis Berger was part of a consortium that won a contract to execute a water and sewerage project in Goa worth Rs 1,031 crore funded by the Japan International Co-Operation Agency. This agency was cleared in 2010 by the Congress-led coalition government, when Kamat was chief minister and Churchill Alemao was Public Works Department minister.
While Alemao maintained he is “innocent”, Kamat said on Wednesday: “I am firm about what I have been saying on day one. I have done nothing wrong. The JICA file did not come to me”.
The police have arrested JICA project director Anand Wachasundar and claim to have established the money trail from former Louis Berger officials to Kamat and Alemao, via hawala.
Political rewards
The bribery scandal has worked as a catalyst both in Goa and national politics.
The BJP believes that the grand old party’s slow resurgence can be beaten off with its own corruption-ridden past. That is why the saffron party is vigorously talking up the graft scandal involving former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister PK Thungon, now sentenced to jail, and the fresh allegations against Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh. That is also why in Goa it has seized upon the Louis Berger scam, which has also brought Assam’s Congress government under the scanner.
As the BJP revels in the Louis Berger controversy, the largely ineffective Goa Congress has found itself in a deeper hole.
In 2012, a massive loss in the assembly elections reduced the party to nine MLAs in the 40-member House. One of these nine MLAs, Mauvin Godinho, is now the party’s severest critic, while another, Atanasio Monserrate, was sacked for anti-party activity. The party’s topmost leaders are not even trying to contest the bribery allegations. “Let there be a probe. We are ready for it,” Leader of Opposition Pratapsing Rane told Scroll.in.
The Louis Berger episode has also proved that Kamat, a member of the influential Gaud Saraswat Brahmin caste, is fallible despite having better friends in the BJP than in the Congress (he was once a BJP minister). Thus far, the BJP government had shown reluctance in acting against him in the mining scam. In fact, for three long years now, a Special Investigation Team had been trying to fix responsibility after a judicial commission indicted Kamat while exposing the mining scandal.
A state BJP leader on condition of anonymity explained why the BJP government, which had been reluctant to prosecute Congressmen linked in official reports and formal complaints to drug trade, casino licensing scams, PWD scams and the mining scam, is moving swiftly in the Louis Berger case.
“We [the local BJP unit] are out of the decision-making chain in the Louis Berger case,” the BJP leader said. “These are directions from the party’s national headquarters with specific instructions to spare none.”
The writer is Goa correspondent for the Indo-Asian News Service.