The Panama Papers by unknow

The Panama Papers by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789353056995
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2019-11-08T00:00:00+00:00


NIIRA RADIA 38

Controversy has never been far from veteran public relations professional Niira Radia, thanks to one leak after another. In 2010, it was the leak of thousands of her telephone conversations which had been intercepted by the income tax department as part of a corporate probe. Just when the momentum of the resultant investigations was dying down came the Panama Papers leak, giving a fresh twist to the Niira Radia saga. At the time, Radia was considered among the movers and shakers of Delhi, thanks to powerful clients like Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani of her public relations firm, Vaishnavi Corporate Communications.

Following the publication of the Radia Tapes, * besides the Central Bureau of Investigation probe, several offshore inquiries were initiated by the income tax department to trace her offshore assets in more than ten countries. Nothing much was apparently found and, subsequently, it was the Mossack Fonseca stockpile that confirmed the existence of one of them, a BVI company called Crownmart International Group Limited. The company was evidently named after another company of which she was earlier the CEO: Crownmart International (India) Private Limited floated in 1992.

The Mossack Fonseca data revealed that it was Niira Radia’s (her name spelt without the extra ‘i’ in the records) father, Iqbal Narain Menon, who set up the BVI firm in 1994. His family addresses in New Delhi’s Vasant Vihar and Feroze Shah Road were part of the client record. In 1997, the company increased its share capital from 50,000 to 1,50,000 and Niira Radia bought 1,49,998 shares at US$1 per share, making her virtually the sole owner of the firm. In the records, she was shown as a British citizen and documents of Crownmart International revealed that she had given her consent for increasing her shareholding in the BVI firm on telephone. Until 2004, several company resolutions were signed by her, which confirm that she was active in the company for almost a decade.

When she was contacted before publication, a spokesperson from Niira Radia’s office stated that she was a UK citizen and all her assets had been declared to the tax authorities there. About the BVI company, her office said in the statement: 39 ‘Crownmart International Group Ltd. was a company owned and operated by Late Mr Iqbal Narain Menon, a British National (Ms Niira Radia’s father). Late Mr Menon was neither Indian resident nor Indian citizen. Subsequent to the demise of Ms Radia’s father in 2003, this company went into administration/liquidation perhaps in 2007.’ A final set of documents among the 232 found in the data on Crownmart International showed that Radia herself had resigned from the firm in 2004 and her father had earlier exited from it in 1995, a year after it was set up. The company was finally struck off in May 2009.

Incidentally, when the ICIJ–Indian Express did its next offshore investigation, Paradise Papers, * in November 2017, registries from the tax haven of Malta showed the existence of two more offshore entities linked to Niira Radia.



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