NEW DELHI, India, April 3, (Reuter): Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi announced today that a Supreme Court judge would enquire into the controversial hiring of a U.S. detective agency to investigate funds illegally held abroad by Indians.
Gandhi told parliament the judge would clear up questions still being raised about the Fairfax group agency despite a government statement on Tuesday that it had not received any information from the agency.
Gandhi’s announcement brought loud protests from the Opposition which demanded a full statement on Fairfax’s role and the terms of reference of the judicial enquiry.
Newspapers have accused the government of trying to hide the truth about who hired the economic intelligence agency to investigate whom and what it discovered.
The uproar in Parliament dis rupted proceedings for an hour the third disrupting this week in the Opposition’s bid to embarrass Gandhi and former Finance Minister V.P. Singh over the hiring of the agency based in Annandale, Virginia.
Fairfax was engaged to probe foreign currency holdings of Indians during Singh’s crackdown last year on black or undeclared money.
One of Gandhi’s closest friends,
India’s top film star Amitabh Bachchan, a member of Parliament, today denied for the second time this week that his brother Ajitabh had Swiss connections abroad.
“If all the money that the government has spent on detective agencies to investigate me and my brother result in anything specific, then please come and confront me with it,” he said in a magazine interview.
Bachchan, a former schoolmate of Gandhi, told Parliament on Tuesday that press allegations that he and his brother were involved in channeling money abroad stank.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 10, 1987
