The daily media offensive against Koda's illegal asset accumulation, which seems to inflate by day, and its part transfer to overseas banks since the last week of October has kept its own telecom minister A. Raja out of the UPA's self-embarrassing publicity radar. Raja's was billed as the biggest ever political graft case involving spectrum allocation to certain private operators by his department of telecommunications (DoT), leading to an alleged loss of government revenue to the tune of Rs. 60,000 crore. The government's loss is the private operators' gain.

Now, the corruption allegations against Raja and DoT have suddenly been overshadowed by Koda's alleged misdeeds. Raja's is an old case, which has been in the news since 2008. It was raised in Parliament mainly by the opposition Left parties and BJP. It also caused a lot of frustration among the opposition politicians as the then government tried to block a meaningful debate on the issue. Raja was the telecom minister then. He continues to hold the same portfolio.

For reasons best known to the powers that be in Delhi, the case resurfaced around the middle of last month following a concerted raid by the central bureau of investigation (CBI) of DoT establishments, including Raja's office (which was later denied), and seizure of many incriminating documents to the acute embarrassment of both the government and its political ally, DMK, to which the telecom minister belongs. In a way, Koda's graft case has come as a boon to the ruling alliance as the public attention is being diverted from Raja to Koda. While the latter has taken the centre stage in the media, a striking similarity between the faces of Raja and Koda keeps the memory of the massive DoT corruption case alive although Koda's picture has suddenly replaced Raja's in the media.

Koda, according the latest estimates of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), is allegedly involved in hawala transactions amounting to some Rs. 4,000 cr. The sum, though not small by any standard, is still much less compared to better known politicians who are under a cloud such as Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar fodder scam, Amar Singh, Mayavati, D.P. Yadav, Sharad Pawar, Jayalalithaa, Raja etc. In today's context, the alleged corruption case against the former prime minister, the late Rajiv Gandhi, in the Bofor's gun deal, looks too petty to even deserve a mention.

The alleged involvement of some of the leading politicians in the Rs. 50,000-cr Telgi stamp paper fraud case and in the Rs. 1,00,000-cr hawala case against a Pune stud farm owner, Hassan Ali, have kept the nation guessing. Since most of such high-profile, high-value political corruption cases invariably end up without prosecution, no one takes them too seriously, not even those big-billed politicians whose names figure frequently in many of the questionable export-import deals and the award of government or PSU contracts.

Assuming that not all corruption allegations are untrue though they are not proved in the court of law, the question still remains: Where do they hide such large sums of money? Real estates, precious metals and jewellery, company shares and business investments are known ways of hiding illegal money. But, they can take care, with some risk, of a few hundred crores of rupees, but not thousands of crores. The hawala route remains the best way to convert large sums of illegal money into 'good' assets and safely park them abroad. And, that is what the big-time political, bureaucrat, business and criminal fraud-stars have been doing all these years.

With the number of Indians living abroad running into several millions, the rupee is no longer a soft currency in many parts of the world. Private money changers from Singapore to Sidney or Copenhagen to Kuala Lumpur do openly trade in rupees, although at lower exchange rates. According to the latest World Bank data, India accounted for 16 per cent of the US$ 328-billion worth of global remittances by expat workers last year. This works out to $52 billion from Indian diaspora. Converted, it is Rs. 2,44,400 crore, all in legal transfers. This shows the financial clout of Indians living and earning abroad. Of course, there is no record of illegal money transfers to and from India, which is suspected to be substantially large if not as large as the World Bank recorded numbers.

Frankly speaking, illegal cash transfers through hawala and securing their legal status abroad through secret bank deposits, real estates and institutional investments are not very easy to trace. Such cash transfers have long become part of a big international money exchange racket and the operations offer full legal and other protection to the cash laundered through such means. One does not need to be a financial genius or the internationally connected personality to transfer and operate such accounts. There are highly reliable and reputable global agencies to handle such cash, which may be illegal in its country of origin, but absolutely legal in the countries where it is parked.

There are scores of popular websites from countries like UK, USA, Canada and Australia, such as www.scfgroup.com, www.capitalConservator.com and www.GLOBAL.MONEY.com, offering a wide range of services as wealth protection, confidential banking, formation of trusts and foundations, wire transfer of any accounts, anonymous brokerage accounts and ATM, etc. Some of them also organise overseas citizenship and dual passports for the seekers, all very legal. There is little that the government of India can do about operations of these offshore firms, soliciting business from India's fraud-stars.

In fact, acts such as political witch-hunting, trading in corruption charges against each other and the misuse of official investigation agencies for the purpose have become a joke. It is not the politicians alone, several high-profile bureaucrats, diplomats, defence services top-brass, policemen, taxmen and judges who have amassed wealth, far beyond their respective declared incomes and officially known sources. Ironically, all of them are living happily with or without the stigma of having their names listed in the black books of official investigating agencies. (IPA Service)