Nira radia : wiki | Details | wikipedia

Nira radia : wiki | Details | wikipedia

Nira Radia is a PR consultant/lobbyist at the center of wiretapping controversy. It is alleged she tried to influence the 2G auction in 2008 by communicating with India’s communication minister A Raja prior to the auction.[1]
Radia’s family had moved to Britain after they fled Lagos, Nigeria, in the aftermath of the Idi Amin-led upheaval in Uganda in the 1970s, and she, the youngest sibling of four sisters and a brother, grew up in Londons suburbia.
Nira Radia’s father, who converted to Islam and was rechristened Iqbal Menon, was an agent for Westland Helicopters in East Africa, and soon started an aircraft charter business in the UK.
A British citizen, Ridia moved fomr England to Surajkund, India with her three sons after her marriage to a Kutchi businessman, Janak Radia failed. In 2003, Dhiraj Singh, a business partner, was arrested with an accomplice for allegedly kidnapping her 18-year-old son.
The sleazy power-broking world was jolted into taking notice of her when Nira Radia’s company, Crown Express, made an audacious bid in 2000 to launch an airline. The bid was foiled swiftly by an airline czar who apparently sent a damning dossier to the then NDA government on her former businesses in the UK — of shell companies, major debts and bankruptcy.
It was Nira Radias association with Singapore Airlines that brought her in touch with the Tatas, and despite the ill- fated Tata- SIA alliance in India, Nira Radia, through her criminal guile, had begun to impress the Tata bosses, notably Ratan Tata and R. K. Krishna Kumar, who was then the head of Tata Tea, and became her rakhi brother.
Nira Radia’s strategy to attack corporate competitors is two-fold – It is about planting stories in the media to gullible or voluntary journalists, forging alliances, creating investor groups, setting up NGOs, threatening media bosses, and taking on the competition. It could be mythical lore but Nira Radia is now credited with fixing Tata Finance in 2001 when she paraded its disgraced boss, Dilip Pendse, to the media; getting the NDA government to allow Tatas to sell 26 per cent stake of VSNL; killing the DLF IPO; setting up NGOs to stall DLFs mall projects; filing PILs to hurt rivals; unleashing a media war in the Ambani vs Ambani gas case; and getting media owners in West Bengal to sing praises of its chief minister and industries minister during the Singur imbroglio. The stories of manipulation and corruption are legion. [edit] Nira Radia, A. Raja, and the largest economic crime
In 2010, the Indian Parliament was thrown into uproar over Nira Radia’s unscrupulous and shady deals in business and politics. Were Indian ministries up for sale?, most notably Telecommunications & IT, then under the corrupt and shamed A. Raja of the southern Indian political party, the DMK? How did a Haryanvi-Punjabi sleazy power peddler get close to Dravida patriarch K. Karunanidhi and his third wife and daughter? The Karunanidhi family saga is like a modern-day Ramayana — with three wives, their children and powerful cousins, it is the story of family intrigue, coronations, wicked plots of rivalry and competition. It was in 2004-end that Karunanidhis third wife, Rajathiammal, and his favourite daughter, Kanimozhi, were introduced to Nira Radia. A close family source reports, “Rajathiammals close confidante, Tulsi Gautam, wife of Dr Gautam, who is the foster son of DMK founder C.N. Annadurai, introduced the two.”
A. Raja, a long-time Rajathiammal confidant, together with Nira Radia, soon became a quartet, with Nira Radia an eager companion to the younger Kanimozhi. As the family disputes spilled out into the open, the lines were clearly drawn — Nira Radia and Co. were on their own, though they sided with the family in exiling the powerful Maran cousins. It was no surprise that Raja was the patriarchs choice in replacing Dayanidhi Maran as telecom minister when the latter was shown the door in 2007.
Kanimozhi became an MP too. It was not just loyalty to the family that pushed Nira Radia to campaign for A. Raja — her star client, Tata Teleservices, had also run foul with the Marans. It was in the late 1990s that the Tatas aligned with Aircel owner C. Shivsankaran, a confidant of the late Murasoli Maran who later fell out with him over a financial deal. It was no surprise that Dayanidhi Maran decided to target the Tatas and Aircel after becoming telecom minister.
By 2008, Nira Radia was running one of the most sought- after corporate communications agency Vaishnavi, and through subsidiaries such as Neucom, Noesis Strategic Consulting Services and Vitcom Consulting, she bagged top- drawer accounts, including the Tatas, Reliance Industries, Unitech Realty, Vedanta, DB Realty, which own Swan Realty, NDTV Imagine and Star TV. To add to the firms starry status, Nira Radia also had retired bureaucrats as consultants — former Telecom Regulatory Authority of India chairman and former special secretary to the Power Ministry, Pradip Baijal, former finance secretary C. M. Vasudev, former Airports Authority of India chairman S. K. Narula and former Foreign Investment Board head Ajay Dua.
“It says a lot about our esteemed colleagues,” sneers a senior bureaucrat, “but it ties up with all of Nira Radias achievements in telecom, power and aviation.” If the Tatas bagged the state-owned Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited ( VSNL) when Baijal was in charge, both Tatas and Reliance were allowed to convert wireless to full mobility when Baijal, again, was TRAI chairman. Nira Radia’s clients Unitech Wireless and Swan Telecom bagged the mega-crore 2G spectrum licences under A. Raja. [edit] The largest financial and economic crime in the history of independent India
The 2G spectrum imbroglio has brought Nira Radia out of the shadowy world in which unscrupulous lobbyists operate. Nira Radia is involved with the largest financial and economic crime in the history of independent India and faces severe criminal prosecution in India with reports filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED), The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Department of Income Tax. This financial and economic crime scam is said to have caused a loss of Rs.1.76 lakh crore (Rs.1.76 trillion/approx $40 billion) to the Government of India.

Posted by musicking on Nov 19 2010. Filed under Wiki. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry