Suddenly, Pallavi opened her eyes and looked at him. ‘Not sleepy?’ she asked, running a hand across his chest. He smiled and shook his head. She pulled him down slowly, kissed him on his lips and snuggled up to him. In the next five minutes, he was fast asleep.
57
August-October 2016
MUMBAI
The following day was a torrid one for everyone at the Reserve Bank of India. The Finance Minister came calling, albeit through a video call. And when the Finance Minister came calling, Ranjeet Kumar couldn’t be far behind. They collectively took off on the RBI Governor. Aditya had no chance to defend himself, or to point out that the entire Le Da Spire fiasco happened also because they had wanted the company to be included in the tender. Khosla was as much their guy as he was Le Da Spire’s. Wasn’t he the fixer for the government too?
But then he couldn’t have said all of that, for this was a formal forum.
The FM called him on a secure line separately, after the call. ‘Look, Mr Kesavan. I’m not sure you realize how big this issue has become. Everyone is pointing a finger at the Prime Minister’s Office. We cannot let that happen. Do something which takes the attention away from the Le Da Spire issue. It is critical. We need this to go away. And go away fast.’
‘What exactly are you are expecting me to do, sir?’ Aditya responded coolly. This was the Finance Minister’s problem, not his. He was quick to realize that the FM was firing from his shoulder. But it was also not lost on him that if he didn’t do as told, he would become the fall guy, and that would be the end of his career in this field.
‘Well, Mr Kesavan, you are senior enough. What do you expect me to tell you? How do you get a big line to look tiny?’ He paused as if waiting for Aditya to respond. And then he answered himself, ‘By drawing a much bigger line right next to it. Don’t think I need to explain myself any further.’
Aditya didn’t take much time to understand what the FM was hinting at. An hour after the call was over, he called in one of the Executive Directors responsible for bank supervision and explained the predicament to him. He had a plan in mind, and he mentioned it to the ED. It seemed to be a good enough plan. Everything was above board. And it would also not look like they were reacting to the Le Da Spire problem, which was something they couldn’t afford.
₹
That evening, Shantanu Ghosh, a senior correspondent with the Economic Times, was trying to close the paper for the night, when his mobile phone beeped. It was a message from someone influential and close to him. ‘RBI has asked the Mercantile Bank board to reconsider the appointment of Trupti Sharma as the CEO for the next three years. Deteriorating asset quality and wrong reporting of losses are behind this decision. Probe further if you want to.’
All hell broke lose in the newsroom. Everyone went into a huddle. This was big news. Trupti Sharma had been at the helm of Mercantile Bank for over a decade. She had built the bank to its current state. When she had taken over, it had been floudering. She had brought it up to a level of one of the largest private sector banks in India. It was an achievement that could not have been ignored. It was only a month ago that Mercantile Bank had declared their first-ever quarterly loss in recent history. Just before declaring their results, they had sent a request to the RBI for approval of the extension of their CEO’s tenure by another three years.
If the message that Shantanu had received was true, then this would be the first time the RBI would have taken such a step. Queries were sent out to Mercantile Bank’s public relations team, and everyone started reaching out to the CEO and her key confidants. Word spread like wildfire. And in no time, everyone was talking about the fact that Trupti Sharma’s tenure extension had been denied.
At 8.45 p.m., a press release was put out by the Reserve Bank of India. This one pertained to another large private bank. As per the release, the RBI had put together a team to conduct a forensic investigation into a loan of Rs 3,500 crore granted to a large business conglomerate by the bank. The loan had turned into an NPA. Two whistle-blowers had alleged that the CEO, Urmila Gaitonde, approved the loan because a large sum of money made its way back to her family concern. This news was bigger than the exposé on the RBI’s denial of Trupti Sharma’s extension.
It was a killer move on the part of the RBI Governor. The two selective leaks pertained to two high-profile and highly respected women CEOs grounded on the same day. There couldn’t have been a bigger piece of news. There was no chance in hell that Le Da Spire would catch the fancy of broadcasters and newspapers over this. And given that this was the private banks at play, political pressure to manage things would be low.
In one masterstroke, Aditya Kesavan had pushed the Le Da Spire tender issue out of the front pages of newspapers and bought himself and the Finance Minister some breathing space.
The Finance Minister was pleased that the PM had been spared, albeit for the moment. Le Da Spire was out of the news.
No one really cared that Aditya Kesavan was making a point to the FM, a point which even Pande had missed. In one stroke, he had taken action against two heavy weight CEOs of private banks and demonstrated to the FM that when it came to private banks, the RBI had effective control and a potent ability to act. In his haste, he had conveniently ignored the fact that the board of the private bank had investigated the CEO and given her a clean chit. Raking this up and piling mud on the bank and the CEO to meet a short-term objective was a very mercenery approach to work, and usually, Aditya would have never acted like that. But he was in love, and he’d do anything to save the woman he was in love with, even if it meant destroying the reputation of a possibly innocent bank CEO.
58
1 November 2016
HAZRATGANJ
Victor D’Souza, the CBI Inspector working with the Uttar Pradesh Crime Branch, was thrilled when he got the response from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) on the biometric match that they had initiated. The fact that they had not yet identified the fourth body had been making him anxious. Wherever dirty money and dead bodies converge, there has to be something sinister underfoot – a dirty story at play.
The NCRB report stated that a file in their records matched with that of the dead man. The fingerprints matched with those of a man named Imran Shaikh, who belonged to Delhi. So finally, the CBI had a lead to follow.
More than the NCRB data, it was the reply from the RBI that surprised D’Souza. They had been able to identify that the cash found on the dead man in Hazratganj and the bundles exchanged from the SBI were part of the lot that had been sent from the Delhi vaults to the RBI currency chest in Tripura. It even informed him that the lot had been sent ten days ago.
How this cash had made its way to Hazratganj from Delhi via Tripura in a matter of ten days completely foxed D’Souza. He decided to make a trip to Delhi to investigate this further.
It would also give him a chance to meet his boss, Kabir Khan, the Additional Director of the CBI.
59
Mumbai
‘The money from Le Da Spire won’t come in so soon. Definitely not before your sixty-day deadline,’ Danish Khosla told Aditya when they met in the rooftop lounge at Four Seasons. The place, too expensive for journalists, was a safe meeting space for them.
Pallavi too had wanted to come with him, but Aditya had shot down the proposal. He couldn’t afford to be seen with her. A picture with her would kill his professional reputation instantly.
‘So what do we do now?’ Aditya was worried.
‘We have to be thankful that they did not ask for a refund for the money spent on the advertising campaign announcing our lady’s intent to repay.’
‘I am on all fours thanking them.’ Aditya’s voice dripped with sarcasm.
‘Come on, Aditya. We tried. We were almost there,’ Khosla said.
‘You know them well. Can’t you ask them to manage? In any case, given the support that they have within the government, it is only a matter of time. The Special Investigation Team will clear them, and it
will be business as usual.’
‘I wish you had heeded my advice when I requested you not to blacklist them.’
‘Things were very different then. There is no point talking about it now,’ Aditya said.
Danish Khosla picked up his glass of whisky and walked to the far end of the roof. Aditya followed. Khosla was quiet, lost in thought.
‘There is a way,’ he said finally.
‘Which is?’
‘We need a jeweller.’
‘And?’
‘We need to secure a loan of 300-odd crores for him through a public sector bank.’
‘How will we do that?’ Aditya asked and almost immediately felt foolish. He was the RBI Governor.
‘Leave that to me. We will make use of the Chacha-Mama route.’
Aditya understood the term. This was the route various companies used to raise money clandestinely from the nationalized banks.
Unscruplous individuals would open companies overseas in the names of their relatives – thereby explaining the reference to ‘Chacha-Mama’. The Chacha-Mama companies would raise an invoice to the Indian company for supply of diamonds (in case of a jeweller).
The Indian jeweller would then approach his banker to issue a letter of undertaking (LOU) to the foreign branch of an Indian bank, asking them to pay the alleged supplier, i.e. the Chacha-Mama company. Once the LOU was issued, the foreign branch would pay the Chacha-Mama company and the same amount would reflect as a loan in the name of the Indian company. The Indian company would settle the loan once the goods imported (from the Chacha-Mama company) were sold off, or in three months, whichever came earlier. While in the normal course of things, this was how an import transaction worked, in the case of Chacha-Mama companies, the goods would never be imported. The LOU would be issued against a fake invoice and the foreign branch of the bank would release the funds without any goods having exchanged hands. The Chacha-Mama company would then transfer the money back to the Indian company, thereby giving it the cashflow without having imported anything. Even if the borrower returned the money to the bank in three months, he would have enjoyed the floats – the balance in his account – for a period of three months.
‘But then we will only have three months to pay back the money. What will we do after that?’ Aditya was curious.
‘This is where you come in,’ Khosla commented.
‘As of now, LOUs can be issued for a duration of three months. After the initial three months, they can be extended for another three months and so on, for a maximum period of one year. So you can, using your authority, raise this period of one year to three years.’
Aditya just heard him out. He knew that if a three-month LOU got rolled over to one year, it meant that instead of three months, the customer would get a year to pay the bank back. And if that got rolled over to three years, the customer would get three years to repay the loan.
‘That way, the Chacha-Mama company that gets paid this money can route it back to Suyog Gold to pay its investors.’ He put an arm around Aditya’s shoulder. ‘And three years is enough for the entire Le Da Spire issue to die down. They will pay you the money and the loan can be cleared.’
Aditya thought for a minute. ‘I can only see two issues. Firstly, who will come in and put his neck on the line to help Pallavi in this? And secondly, how will we get a bank to lend almost 300-plus crores to a person of our choice?’
‘You worry about the former. Ask Pallavi if she is close to any jeweller who can help her. I will take care of the loan from a bank. Remember, every banker has a price. You just have to figure out what’s his.’
Aditya thought about it for a while. ‘I am not sure if I want it to be done so blatantly,’ he murmured. ‘The change in policy will be a difficult one for me to justify. There is no background to it. No compulsion. I cannot wake up one morning and tell my team to change the LOU norms.’
‘What can I say, Mr Kesavan. If you want to wake up next to your lady love, then you need to wake up one morning and give instructions to your team to do the needful.’
Aditya was not convinced. The plan was too risky. ‘Surely there has to be another way, a plan B.’
‘There is a plan B – pull out three hundred crores from the RBI vault.’
‘You are crazy,’ said Aditya as he turned and walked towards the lift. Pallavi would be waiting for him.
60
20 October 2016
MUMBAI
Balbir Singh was getting ready to leave for work. He was an aircraft maintenance engineer with Air India. His only job was to assist in overhaul, test and repair of electrical, pneumatic, fuel and hydraulic equipment and accessories.
Six years into his job, Balbir was a stickler for time. It normally took him fifteen minutes to reach his workplace from his house in the Air India colony in Kalina, Mumbai. His journey back home in the evening would take him anything upwards of forty-five minutes, depending on the state of traffic. That morning, Balbir was in a particularly chirpy mood. He had been promised a transfer to Delhi. His parents were in Ludhiana and were getting old. He wanted to be closer to them. Most importantly, the transfer was to come with a promotion.
He stopped the car at a red light about a kilometre from home. Traffic was thin at that early hour. His was the only car on the road. He contemplated jumping the signal but it was against his DNA. He sat in his car, waiting for the signal to turn green. That’s when he saw an old woman on her morning walk being attacked by two rogues. It looked like a chain-snatching incident. Acting on instinct, Balbir Singh rolled down his window and yelled at the chain snatchers. The woman was rolling on the road and resisting the robbers. Balbir jumped out of his car, and ran towards the woman. The crooks saw him coming and scooted. Balbir chased them for a minute. But the headstart that they had was enough for them to race away. Balbir remembered the old woman and ran back to the signal to check if she was fine.
The woman had disappeared. She was not there. He was surprised. Possibly her family was somewhere close and had taken her home. Well, the least he expected was an acknowledgement and expression of gratitude, but clearly there was going to be none of that.
He got into his car and drove on to the airport. He was a mile away from it when he felt something cold on his neck. He looked up at the AC duct to see if there was a problem with the rear vent. As his eyes travelled up towards the roof of the Innova, the rearview mirror passed his line of vision and he froze. His feet pressed down on the brake and the car came to a grinding halt.
₹
The person in the back seat of the car who had a gun pushed against Balbir’s neck forced him to keep driving. He was taken to a desolate bungalow towards the east end of the airport. Two people were waiting for him there. It didn’t take him long for him to realize that the two of them were the same robbers he had tried to chase down.
He was blindfolded, his hands tied together and his lips sealed with packing tape. He was then held in one of the rooms. All his possessions were taken away from him and he was tied to a chair.
‘Let’s go,’ said one of the kidnappers to the other. Balbir knew that this had to be more than just a straightforward kidnapping. Why would anyone kidnap him? He had nothing to offer. It had to be something more.
The kidnappers got into his car and drove off from the bungalow. As they approached the airport, all but one of them got off. The one who was driving drove straight towards the airport. He looked at the rearview mirror and admired himself. He looked quite a bit like Balbir Singh. The pagdi on his head and facial hair in abundance would prevent anyone from recognizing him. In any case, he had at best a ten-minute job to do.
Using Balbir’s identity card and parking sticker, the man gained access to the airport maintenance area. He walked confidently towards a parked Air India plane, making a brief detour to a garbage dump nearby. He dug through the dump and pulled out a marked green garbage bag. From inside the bag, he extracted a small packet. He then continued walking confidently towards the aircraft
, crossing two other maintenance engineers on the way. They smiled at him, a smile which he returned. It is impossible for every maintenance engineer to know all the others. That’s why once you gain access, it’s as good as having a free run of the entire place.
The imposter got into a parked Air India plane and walked straight into the toilet. He opened a panel to which the baby diaper changing plate was fixed and dumped the packet into the gap behind it, before sealing it back again.
Job done, he walked out of the aircraft and straight to the Innova, which he drove out of the airport. He had to take care of Balbir Singh.
The job in the maintenance hanger had been easier than he had anticipated.
61
Mumbai
‘Mehul Modi was Vicky’s friend. Maybe we can ask him?’ Pallavi said when Aditya recounted his conversation with Danish Khosla.
‘Why would he do it for you?’
‘Not sure if he would, but he has been in touch of late, enquiring about Vicky.’
Aditya found that quite strange. ‘Has he met you recently?’ he asked, suspicious.
‘Adityaaaaaa!’ Pallavi said, exasperated. He liked how it sounded, coming from her. ‘You know I don’t step out of the house.’ She pouted. ‘I do not want to go anywhere. Everyone looks at me as if I am a villian. As if I am a cheat. Vicky has left me good for nothing. If I don’t go out, how will I ever meet him? And if I did get out, don’t you think you would be the first person to know?’
‘I know. I know,’ Aditya said as he walked up to her and held her face in his palms, kissing her full on the mouth.
‘I am worried,’ Pallavi said, pushing Aditya away.
‘Hmm…’
‘You are busy hmming and there are only fifteen days left before the sixty-day deadline that you imposed on me ends.’
Don't Tell the Governor Page 15
