Raja in Time's ignominious club

Former Telecom Minister A Raja, at the centre of the 2G spectrum scam, has earned the dubious distinction of figuring in the list of Time magazine’s “an ignominious club of privileged leaders who stepped too far”.

The 2G scam is ranked No 2 in the list of scandals and scams in the all-time Top 10 Abuses of Power, only next to ex-American President Richard Nixon’s ‘Plumbers’, a secret unit tasked with digging up dirt on Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg.

Raja has beaten some tough contenders to be ranked second and be ahead of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, North Korean autocratic leader Kim Jong-II and skirt-chasing Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Other persons included in the list are former Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski, former president of Israel Moshe Katsav, Roger Vangheluwe, who stepped down as Bishop of Bruge, former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration Zheng Xiaoyu and US Secretary of the Interior in 1922 Albert Fall.