Fallout of DMK move? Kanimozhi faces ED heat, jail term

The heat has been turned on the DMK barely hours after its party president M Karunanidhi announced his decision for the party to to pull out of the UPA government over the Sri Lankan Tamil issue. Enforcement Directorate officials have planted media stories suggesting that Karunanidhi’s daughter Kanimozhi, who is one of the accused in the 2G spectrum case, may face another jail term - and even see her properties attached - if they file a chargesheet against her under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act. [caption id=“attachment_668056” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  M Karunanidhi. Agencies.[/caption] Kanimozhi had in 2011 spent 190 days in Tihar Jail on charges that Kalaignar TV, in which the CBI said she was the “active brain”, had received Rs 209 crore from Swan Telecom, one of the beneficiaries in the 2G spectrum allocation by former Telecom Minister A Raja. Kalaignar TV has claimed that the money was a “loan” from Swan Telecom (now Etilsat DB), which had since been returned. The Indian Express reports quoting unidentified ED officials that the chargesheet against Kanimozhi and A Raja is being drafted and will likely be filed early next month. Under the stringent provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, properties identified as “proceeds of crime” can be attached. The Act also provides for seven years’ rigorous imprisonment. In other words, if the chargesheet is filed next month, Kanimozhi could potentially face a second jail term. But the timing of this selective leak of an imminent chargesheet, which is effectively a thinly veiled threat, appears to point to the usual Congress strategem of turning the screws on regional leaders in order to secure their political support for its survival at the Centre. In much the same way that the Congress has used the CBI cases against Mulayam Singh Yadav,  Mayawati and Lalu Prasad Yadav (among others) as a leverage to bail out the UPA government, it appears that the threat of Kanimozhi’s arrest is being held out now to ’tame’ her father Karunanidhi, who has walked out (or, more appropriately, been wheeled out in a wheelchair) of the UPA government. The report notes that the Enforcement Directorate adjudicating authority had issued orders against various other accused in the 2G scam case as far back as in January 2012, identifying properties owned by them as “proceeds of crime.” Subsequently, movable and immovable  of Shahid Usman Balwa, Swan Telecom, DB Realty and others, worth about Rs 225 crore overall, had been attached by the Enforcement Directorate. These included apartments, land, money in bank accounts and other assorted assets that had been identified as “proceeds of crime.” But although the adjudicating authority had issued an order against Kanimozhi stating that the “so-called loan” from Swan Telecom  to Kalaignar TV was the central issue in the case before it, Kalaignar TV properties have thus far not been attached. If that element of discretion worked to the DMK’s advantage then, so long as it was in the UPA fold, it is now at the receiving end of the prosecutors’ particular attention now that the DMK has pulled out of the UPA government. Other reports insinuate that the DMK’s decision to pull out may have less to do with the Sri Lankan  Tamils’ issue as with the realisation that the 2G spectrum trial is not going in its favour. A report in the Economic Times says that “tension between the Congress and the DMK had been brewing” over the 2G spectrum case for some time. For one thing, the DMK, it added, was unhappy that Raja, the main accused, had not been allowed to depose before the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) probing the scam. In particular, the report notes, the DMK had been rattled by the testimony of key government witnesses in the case, principally that of Attorney General G Vahanvati, which had advanced the prosecution’s case that Raja had abused the first-come-first-served policy for allocation of telecom spectrum by going behind the back of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Cabinet. It is hard to establish the truth of these allegations and theories, but they reinforce the widely held suspicion that prosecution in big-ticket corruption cases involving the Congress’ regional allies or supporters can be speeded up or slowed down according to the political expediency of the Congress. When cynical politics - and the exigencies of political survival for the Congress - interferes with the due process of law, what chance does a fair trial have? Any case is only as good as the prosecution wants it to be. Karunanidhi and Kanimozhi were evidently shielded for so long because the DMK was within the UPA government. Now that it has come out, it has to face the full force of the law that had been held back thus far.