Whistle-blowers need to interact and share: Moneylife
http://www.moneylife.in/ article/if-whistle-blowers- want-action-they-have-to- interact-and-trust/50319.html
If the whistle-blowers want action, they have to interact and share:
Moneylife article
By Sucheta Dalal
Excerpts:
“Soon
after the first exposé, I wrote another report, which put the size of the scam
at Rs5,000 crore (a stupendous figure in those pre-liberalisation days) that
included UTI units, fake banking receipts (BRs), deals, portfolio management
schemes (with PSUs), bill discounting, etc. On the day the report was
published, the then Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor, S Venkitaramanan,
called a press conference to deny the report. Such denials by RBI are unheard
of even today; in 1992, it was an extraordinary event. I thought it was the end
of my career. On checking with DT (since my information had indirectly come
from the central bank itself), we gathered that the RBI governor, indeed, had
no concrete basis to deny my report.
He
had probably been asked by the government to issue a denial, in order to soothe
worried foreign creditors and others. Armed with this knowledge, a few of us
(including a couple of friendly journalists in other papers) grilled the
governor, until it was fairly clear that the denial was baseless and my report
was accurate. Of course, he got the media headlines that he wanted the next
day. Ironically, other publications soon began to report that the scam was
three or four times the figure I had quoted. The income-tax (I-T) department
also made vastly exaggerated claims of tax dues from all the scam accused—their
actions have ensured that trials in the special court, and even some sessions
court cases, have not ended after 25 years."
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