If you look at the history of India’s credit cycles, most of the time companies have gone bad, but not their promoters,” Mr Uday Kotak said, referring to the owners of India’s largest industrial houses. “This time the banks must ensure that the pain is shared fairly between the banks and equity owners.”
For the time being, the heat is on the granite barons of the state and Durai Dayanidhi, the son of Karunanidhi scion, DMK strongman and union minister MK Alagiri, who is reportedly on the run.
The police has issued a lookout notice for him. The granite company, with which he is allegedly associated, is among the two top violators. The key men of both the companies have surrendered and are in custody. However, people close to Dayanidhi have denied the allegations.
In a nutshell, the scam is about illegal quarrying of granite by a handful of companies in Madurai, in southern Tamil Nadu for several years. They not only stole the granite, but also caused extensive environmental damage besides grabbing land from people including policemen.
The illegal operations have also reportedly deprived farmers of their livelihood. Officials of the Tamil Nadu Minerals Corporation (TAMIN), departments of revenue, and geology and mining and the police have allegedly connived with the quarry mafia. Apparently, one company alone owned about 3000 acres of land in Madurai and surrounding places.
The story of the granite mafia wouldn’t have been out, but for the leak of a letter by former Madurai collector and a Braveheart civil servant U Sagayam, who had earlier waged a war against the sand quarry mafia. In his letter to the government, Sagayam had highlighted the extent of illegal quarrying in the district and had even estimated a ballpark figure of more than Rs 16,000 crore. However, nothing big happened till the letter was leaked to the media in August first week.
Immediately, several teams headed by the present Madurai collector inspected about 175 quarries and recommended a DVAC (Department of Vigilance and Anti Corruption) probe. By the end of August, the DVAC began its investigation and raided quarry operators and government offices. About 30 persons have been arrested and several documents and vehicles seized. Besides the revenue losses, the DVAC is also looking into the collusion of the government officials.
The Hindu reported how the granite operators forced people to part with their land.
“They used to block the water channels and stop irrigation. Or else dump the granite waste on their land. In some cases, they had threatened the landlords by blasting explosives in the nearby areas,” the report said quoting V Balakrishnan, a superintendent of police, who is now receiving complaints from people who lost their houses and land to the quarry mafia.
The report also quoted a woman who lost her agricultural land to the devious ways of the mafia.: “with no irrigation, I tried to plant coconut saplings. The saplings were damaged in the nights and boulders placed on the land,”
Yet again, as in the case of the CAG Vinod Rai, it is an individual effort that brought the scam to light and prompted the government to act. That the officer Sagayam, who wrote the letter, had been transferred 18 times in his career spanning two decades does indicate the fundamental flaw in our system that encourages illegalities and mega scams.-from FirstPost
“We try to hide religiously,” explained Steven Feinberg, the CEO of a takeover firm called Cerberus Capital Management that recently drove one of its targets into bankruptcy after saddling it with $2.3 billion in debt. “If anyone at Cerberus has his picture in the paper and a picture of his apartment, we will do more than fire that person,” Feinberg told shareholders in 2007. “We will kill him. The jail sentence will be worth it.”
BORIS BEREZOVSKY’S present has now been returned. One day in 2007 Mr Berezovsky, the exiled Russian oligarch, pounced on his onetime business partner and now sworn rival, Roman Abramovich, in a Hermès boutique in London. “I have a present for you,” Mr Berezovsky reportedly said, serving him with a writ for what would become a $5 billion lawsuit—the largest in British history.
At its core, the case centered on whether, as Mr Berezovsky claimed, Mr Abramovich threatened him into selling his share of the Russian oil major Sibneft, along with other assets, at a greatly undervalued price after Mr Berezovsky fell out with President Vladimir Putin and fled Russia in 2000. (Mr Berezovsky parted with his stake of Sibneft for $1.3 billion in 2001; Mr Abramovich sold his own stake of the company for $11.9 billion in 2005.) For his part, Mr Abramovich said that Mr Berezovsky never owned a part of Sibneft at all, but rather that Mr Abramovich paid him for krysha, which literally means “roof,” but in the world of Russian business suggests a combination of access, protection, and generally making sure the necessary things happen and the unwelcome things don’t.-from the Economist
“Having used brilliantly-crafted words to buy a few weeks of market tranquility, the last thing central bankers want today is to use Jackson Hole to prematurely signal the difficulties of implementing on their own sufficient follow-up actions.”-wrote Mohamed El Arian in FT