This woman
truly fascinates me. If she could impress so many top people with her persuasive
skills and get things done so easily, she must have had something very special
in her which very few would have. How could she use so many top people and make
them do whatever she wanted. So much so, that even Mukesh Ambani outsourced all the
PR work of Reliance Industries to her. She might have been discredited but she has
a very impressive personality.
The NIRA
RADIA tapes revealed in 2009 involved a huge scandal. They are telephonic
conversations between Nira Radia, a political lobbyist in India, the Telecom
Minister A Raja, Senior journalists, politicians in India and Corporate houses.
Her influence spread to key ministries in the central cabinet.
Nira Radia
(formerly Nira Menon (Manan) ) was born at Nairobi in Kenya into a Punjabi
Hindu business family. In the 1970’s she moved to London along with her family where
she studied at the University of Warwick. She married a Gujarati businessman
Janak Radia in 1981 with whom she had 3 sons after which they divorced in 1994.
She then moved to India as a Person of Indian Origin. Before that she
established some travel and aviation companies all of which went bankrupt and
were liquidated.
In 1994 she
was sent by her father to India to help the Sahara Airlines CEO to acquire 2
Boeing 737-400 aircraft and she liaisoned with a Los Angeles based leasing company
for financing the planes.
In 1995 she
was hired by Sahara Airlines as an aviation consultant and she hired an office
at Delhi for operations. On behalf of Sahara Airlines she successfully negotiated
with the India Gandhi International Airport at Delhi. There she met Dheearaj
Singh, the grandson of former CM of Haryana Rao Birendra Singh who was then
with Sahara Airlines.
Later she
made him quit Sahara and join her as a partner in her firm at Mumbai where she
moved to. In 1996, she also arranged funding for a Hindi film “Agni Sakshi” to
Bal Thackeray’s son. She and Dheeraj
Singh arranged for a 25 million USD deal for Sahara to purchase 4 helicopters from
Eurocopter in Bahrain. They got a big commission on the deal which they routed
through ‘Sofema” a French company.
This Bahrain
trip estranged Dheeraj Singh and his wife and they had an acrimonious divorce. Then
Nira Radia, her previous 3 children with Janak Radia, her sister and even Dheeraj
Singh started staying in her estate in Bombay. To some people shje introduced Dheeraj
Singh as her husband.
When the 1998
elections brought BJP to power, Ananth Kumar became the Civil Aviation Minister
and she became close to him. He introduced her to Swami Vishwesha Teertha who
became her spiritual guru.
In the same
year she set up a firm Radia Incorporated and became its CEO. KLM UK hired the
firm for return of 2 aircraft leased to one company in India. With lightning
speed she swept aside the legal tangles for the deal and got the aircraft
released. For that she earned a commission of Rs 2.5 crores. ( In 1998 that was
a big sum).
She again
arranged a deal for purchase of helicopters by the Karnataka government in 2001
for Rs 23 crores.
In 1999 she
made Ananth Kumar, the Minister for civil aviation to block a deal of Jet Aiways
to purchase 5 ATR aircraft. Then she approached ATR and struck a deal for getting
the aircraft supplied for Rs1.85 crores. She then got them released. She then
opened a Swiss Bank account as well as an account in Channel Islands for that
money.
In April 1999
Radia persuaded Ananthkumar to alter the policy to switch over from Boeing to
Airbus for purchase of 39 aircraft for the Indian Airlines. But elections were
approaching then and when Radia’s closeness to Ananthkumar has become known and
rumours began to float that he was trying to alter the policy of the airlines
for her. So he was removed from his ministerial position.
In the year
2000 Singapore airlines was negotiating with the Civil Aviation ministry and approached
Radia who got it done. Singapore Airlines was at that time in talks with Ratan Tata
for a stake in air India and they put in a good word for her to Ratan Tata.
In the year
2000, Radia tried to start her own airlines but failed as she could not show
transparency in funding of the airline. She tried again in 2004. She could not
get approval due to her foreign citizenship.
In the year
2000, Ratan Tata could not get a stake for Air India from Singapore Airlines
and looking to the smooth way she handled the Singapore Airlines Transaction
with the Civil Aviation Ministry, offered all the 90 Tat group accounts to
Radia and she set up Vaishnavi Corporate Communications Pvt. Ltd in 2001 for PR
work. Apart from the Tata group, she also handled the accounts of Unitech
group, Confederation of Indian Industry, Hindustan Construction Company and the
GMR group.
From 2005 to
2009 Radia caught hold of many retiring top Bureaucrats and pulled them into
her Company. They are, former Chairman of AAI, former secretary Department of Industrial
Policy & Promotion (DIPP), former secretary of Civil Aviation, former
secretary of New and Renewable Energy. She certainly got hold of an illustrious
catch.
In 2007 Radia
incorporated another company Noesis Strategic Consulting Pvt. Ltd. with another
former chairman of the AAI, former Finance secretary and former chairman of
TRAI. Noesisi’s clients included Tata Teleservices, Tata Communications Ltd.,
Vedanta Resources and the Government of Oman. In 2008, Mukesh Ambani outsourced all of Reliance Industries public
relations to her and she setup Neucom Consulting just for that purpose.
These
conversations were taped by the IT Department in the year 2008-09 for 300 days
after prior approval from the Home Ministry as a part of their investigation
into money laundering, restricted financial practices and tax evasion. These were
leaked later to the press. Nira Radia used to run a public relations firm
“Vaishnavi Communications” which was investigated by the CBI.
In 2009 the
tapes formed the foundation of the 2G Spectrum case in which the Government was
accused of selling scarce radio spectrum at throwaway prices to ineligible
companies. The CAG pegged the loss at Rs 1,76,000 crores.
In the year
2010, a magazine reported the transcripts of the conversations, which were
promptly denied by most of them.
The CBI had
5851 conversations by Nira Radia, taped in 300 days time, of which some of them
are for brokering a deal in the 2G spectrum. In the tapes several prominent
people were heard in conversation with Radia.
Among them
prominent were
Politicians:
1.
Ranjan Bhattacharya, foster son in
law of Vajpayee.
2.
Kanimozhi
3.
A Raja
4.
Arun Jaitley
Journalists:
1.
Barkha Dutt
2.
Prabhu Chawla
3.
Shaknar Aiyer
4.
Vir Sanghvi
5.
Navika Kumar
6.
Rohini Singh
7.
Casual conversations with Editors of
Times of India, Economic Times and the Hindu Business line.
Others:
1.
Ratan Tata
2.
Suhel Seth
In a blackout
most of the Indian TV Channels & Newspapers blacked out the news of the
tapes. So the news got circulated by Facebook and Twitter.
Initially
only the Deccan Herald and Indian Express wrote about the tapes. Most of the
other magazines said that the authenticity of the tapes cannot be ascertained. Most
of the big newspapers and the TV news media blacked out the story.
Obviously all
the journalists named denied their role and said they did nothing. This is a huge
scam which the media conveniently brushed under the carpet. And both the big
political parties were involved in it.
The CBI might
have said to the SC that there is nothing incriminating in the Nira Radia Tapes,
but indeed there si a lot in them which was never fully made public.
On account of
the Nira Radia tapes the Communications Minister A. Raja had to resign for his
involvement in the 4 G scam. So in all she proved to be the nemesis for 2
central cabinet ministers; Ananth Kumar and A. Raja.
