Verma Puts Blame On Lily George

Abhishek Verma, trader in foreign currency, yesterday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to explain foreign currency transactions that could have violated Fera and claimed he was only a witness in a case that involved Congress president aide V George.

After being questioned by Enforcement Directorate officials, Verma claimed before TV cameras that he had actually appeared as a witness in a case ED had registered against Lily George, wife of V George. The latter is an aide in Congress president Sonia Gandhi's secretariat and was PA to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

Verma brandished a letter in support of his contention. The letter was written to Abhishek Verma asking him to appear in a case connected with Lily George. Sources in the Congress denounced this letter as a forgery. ED officials said they had not written any such letter.

 

Verma said Lily George had sent large sums of money abroad using the hawala route in the early 1980s and got back Rs 2 crore under the amnesty scheme offered by the government. The money, he claimed, was transferred abroad by him. If the charge that the money was sent abroad is proved, V George could be in a lot of trouble because he was a public servant at the time and, therefore, subject to a code of conduct.

Congress sources said yesterday that Verma had actually appeared for interrogation in the case registered against him for Fera violation. Lily George had nothing to do with the case.

Officially the Congress chose not to take notice of the Lily George-V George affair. "I don't know anything about it" was the refrain of spokesman Ajit Jogi, when asked repeatedly what he thought of the `forgery'.

V George has wielded enormous clout in his capacity as PA to Rajiv Gandhi and later to Sonia Gandhi. Many in the Congress feel that he functions as a parallel power centre.

Efforts to replace him only saw him ensconced even more comfortably. The last such move was to replace V George by a former bureaucrat R D Pradhan. Not only did the move fail, but also soon after, Pradhan's ambition to become a Rajya Sabha member came to nought as he lost the election because of cross voting, allegedly because V George called in some old debts in Maharashtra. If Abhishek Verma's interrogation yields some conclusive linkages between V George and hawala transactions, the case could alter the balance of power in the Congress conclusively.