The Bell Tolls For Itc
All evidence suggests that the FERA case against the company is solid. The Chitalias, the companys accomplices in the United States, have more or less turned approver, and confessions from some executives are also reported. In the circumstances, the raids and arrests would appear to be an instance of the exhibitionism to which the investigating and law enforcing agencies are prone. Wouldnt the same investigation have been possible without a grandstand display? Is questioning not possible without arrests, which should normally follow a charge sheet? The credibility of the enforcement directorate is not enhanced by highly publicised raids; it would be more enhanced if it won more convictions. Every year the revenue departments put out figures of the crores of rupees of income tax arrears, including those of the great and the famous. They forget to mention that these are only figures of their claims on the taxpayers, and that they are unlikely to realise more than a fraction of their claims. The same goes for the figure of $100 million being bandied about in the ITC case.
What about ITC itself? The facts available point to a deeply corrupt company, whose officials were willing to sink to almost anything in terms of financial shenanigans. Some of the officials may have been personally honest, and dirtying their hands only in the interest of the company; but that is no legal defence, and perhaps not a moral one either. Yet, the bigger sin may be not corruption but spectacular incompetence: crores of rupees lost in export deals, millions of dollars invested in dud shares, playing into the hands of people who can hold the company to ransom, running subsidiary companies into the ground, bungling a restaurant project, and leaving behind a massive trail of wrongdoing. How did such a company figure as a blue chip, indeed outperform almost every other company on the country for years together? If the answer was not good management, and if ITCs culture has been as hopelessly corrupt as is now manifest, hard questions need to be asked as to how shareholders interests are to be protected from now on. The enforcement directorate can help by bringing its cases to a quick and fair end.