P5 – Six Questions for Ajay Shah

Ajay Shah wanted to conjure a trick for his master - but instead of a rabbit came an owl

Ajay Shah wanted to conjure a trick for his master - but instead of a rabbit came an owl
Ajay Shah wanted to conjure a trick for his master - but instead of a rabbit came an owl

How other players were undermined

The bonds between NSE officials and other C-Company minions like Ajay Shah and K P Krishnan ran deep. There was a concerted effort by these venal scallywags to run down the Multi Commodities Exchange (MCX) as it rose to dizzying heights in a very short time. Figure 1 shows how the various minions conspired to keep MCX under pressure using highly questionable tactics:

C-Company moves to undermine MCX
Figure 1: C-Company moves to undermine MCX

In the above graphic, see how the baton was picked up by Shah and NSE as the head honcho was no longer the FM. It is a different matter that as the Home Minister, he tapped the phones of the then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji to monitor the thinking in the Finance department[1].

Selective Action to benefit a few

The selective taxation of goods/ commodities/ services is an art that honcho P Chidambaram mastered. History is replete with instances of him dropping a hint on a certain sector, watching the stocks of that sector take a dive only to clarify a day later that he was misquoted[2]. In Feb 2007, the then Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced that duty was being raised on iron ore exports, causing a steep fall in stock prices of Iron ore companies (e. g. Sesa Steel). In May, Vedanta (was Sterlite before it went public – yes the same one that was shut down last month in Thoothukkudy) swooped in and scooped up Sesa Steel for a song. Guess who was a Director in Vedanta Group till a day before he became the Finance Minister in 2004? Mr. Chidambaram.

And within a few months, Chidambaram was again targeting the Steel sector, warning them that they were acting like a cartel![3]

That this man still is not in jail, despite being caught with top-secret papers meant for the eyes of the Supreme Court[4] makes one’s blood boil.

Ajay Shah’s lies

When asked, Ajay Shah said that he has not met Mr. P Chidambaram since 2004. What about other members of the Chidambaram family? Or a C-Company minion? Or a trusted go-between fixer? Here are some very serious questions:

  1. When the Income Tax authorities raided your premises (along with those of OPG and related institutions) in November 2017, they took away several laptops, storage devices and confidential documents[5]. They allegedly found budget presentations of Mr. P Chidambaram, with date and time stamps prior to the actual release of the budget! How did this land on your computer Mr. Shah? Going one step further, if you knew beforehand what was going to be affected, then you and your C-Company cohorts could have made a killing in the stock market! Never mind that the Head Honcho too would have scooped in to make a big chunk.
  2. Several cabinet notices/ minutes and records were also allegedly discovered in your laptop. How do you explain this? If this is true, should you not be in custody, answering some inconvenient questions about how you came to be in possession of top-secret documents? Reliable sources have indicated that the IT department has forwarded these incriminating data to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for action.
  3. You were on the board of India Value Fund (hence renamed as TrueNorth)[6]. This is a Venture Capital firm with close to $1.8 billion in funding, with a recent infusion of close to $600 million. Except for 1 hit, this firm has not had much success… But it continues to get round after round of funding – can you explain who TrueNorth’s benefactors are? The site just says that there are over 35 high-quality institutional investors. Can you reveal the names? This VC firm is at least 18 years old. Why does it not divulge the promoters’ names?
  4. You and your wife Susan Thomas continue to get hefty royalties from the turnover of NIFTY 50 trading which is unusual. The industry norm is that the designers are given a one-time fee for their work, typically called Non-recurring Engineering (NRE) fees. Now almost 80% of NSE trading is in NIFTY 50 stocks, especially Future and Options! Did you divulge this information to the companies on whose Boards you sit? Worse, did you divulge to these boards your profit sharing arrangements with companies like AlphaGrep, OPG Securities, and Omnesys, to whom you sold your algo with software through Sunita Thomas?
  5. Is it true that there are over 40 consultants hired by you using the NIPFP money who are sons/ daughters of influential Bureaucrats, Judges, Lawyers, and Activists? Are these sinecure appointments, with salaries ranging from Rs.50,000 to Rs.200,000 per month? If yes, then why is the Finance Ministry footing the bill?
  6. After the raid by CBI on your premises, did you fly out to London? For what purpose? While in London, who did you meet? Would this be a 46-year old “entrepreneur” who happens to be himself on the run, trying to cover up his tracks?

There is more…

The information in this post can be validated by the CBI after going through the passport details and travel records. It is amazing that this man still roams free. CBI should take him into custodial interrogation and he will sing like a Canary. Just today, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) has issued him a Show Cause Notice[7]. The long arm of the law has started catching up and there is nowhere to go.

Continued…

References:

[1] Fight between Pranab Mukherji and P Chidambaram escalatesApr 22, 2011, India Today

[2] Vedanta increases its iron gripMay 3, 2007, minesandcommunities.org

[3] Chidambaram again targets steel, cement “cartel”Apr 22, 2008, Times of India

[4] Aircel-Maxis deal: Classified scam report seized from PC HomeFeb 8, 2018, Pioneer

[5] Why Income Tax officers are zeroing in on Ajay ShahNov 26, 2017, The Sunday Guardian

[6] India Value Fund – D.DesignStudio.com

[7] SEBI sends show-cause notices to NSE, ex-MDsJul 5, 2018, Times of India

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An inventor and out-of-the-box thinker, Sree Iyer has 37 patents in the areas of Hardware, Software, Encryption and Systems.

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