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Indian government paid kickbacks to Iranian: book

New Delhi: The Indian government had given $ 6 million in kickbacks to an Iranian national for getting a $250 million loan from the Shah of Iran to tide over the foreign exchange shortage in the mid-1970s, a book has claimed.

The payment was given to Rashidyan, a close friend of a sister of Shah of Iran, for having brokered the loan from Tehran to tide over the crisis, it has been alleged.

The then Finance Secretary, Gopi Kaul, had gone to negotiate the loan and was helped by some local Indian businessmen, the book said. However, the Iranian Finance Minister was against the loan but it was sanctioned with the help of Rashidyan, according to the book “Inside IB and RAW: The Rolling Stone that Gathered Moss,” authored by K. Sankaran Nair, former Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) chief.

Giving a broad outline of the incidents that took place in the country after the Janata Party led by Morarji Desai took charge as the Prime Minister, Mr. Nair claimed that the new government was full of venom against Indira Gandhi and her family as well as the top civil servants and intelligence officers. In order to score brownie points over Mr. Nair, Desai asked his bureaucrats to enquire into an allegation that he (Nair) had banked $6 million of Sanjay Gandhi’s “ill-gotten money in Geneva,” the author alleged.

“Actually, a payment of this sum into a Swiss bank had been made from the funds of Ministry of External Affairs, on behalf of the Finance Ministry, after clearance from the former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,” he said. He was involved in the transaction “purely as a courier” in depositing the money that came, Mr. Nair claimed. — PTI

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