Hawala scandal

The Hawala scandal or hawala scam was an Indian political scandal involving payments allegedly received by politicians through hawala brokers, the Jain brothers. It was a US$18 million dollar bribery scandal that implicated some of the country's leading politicians. There were also alleged connections with payments being channelled to Hizbul Mujahideen militants in Kashmir. [Open letter to Prime Minister of India Narsimhanrao, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression, July 16, 2001 accessed at [http://www.cjfe.org/protestlets/2001/indiag16.html] Nov 2, 2006]

Those accused included Lal Krishna Advani who was then Leader of opposition. He and others were acquitted in 1997 and 1998, partly because the hawala records (including diaries) were judged in court to be inadequate as the main evidence. [Sudha Mahalingam, "Jain Hawala Case: Diaries as evidence", Frontline magazine, Vol.15: No.06: Mar 21 - Apr 3, 1998, accessed at [http://www.hinduonnet.com/fline/fl1506/15060270.htm] Nov 2, 2006] The failure of this prosecution by the Central Bureau of Investigation was widely criticised. ["A glaring CBI failure", editorial, The Tribune, Feb 2, 2000 accessed at [http://www.tribuneindia.com/2000/20000202/edit.htm#1] Nov 2, 2006]

ee also

* Vineet Narain, the journalist who broke the story

Further reading

* Kapoor, S. (1996), "Bad Money, Bad Politics: The Untold Hawala Story", Har–Anand Publications, Delhi - cited (p.22) by Ashok V. Desai in "The Economics and Politics of Transition to an Open Market Economy: India", OECD Working Paper 155 accessed at [http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/18/3/1921937.pdf] Nov 2, 2006

* "Hawala. An Informal Payment System and Its Use to Finance Terrorism" by Sebastian R. Müller (Dec. 2006), ISBN 3-8655-0656-9

Notes