The Income-Tax department is investigating some foreign donations received by the Congress before the general elections which were shown in the partys books but without any mention of the identity of the donors as required by law.
The investigation could be used to embarrass party president Sitaram Kesari who was the party treasurer then and is now in a position to mount a bid to bring down the Gowda government. However, party sources reveal that he is in the clear since at least one of the donations was received while Kesari was ill and an acting treasurer was functioning in his place.
These sources indicate that all the three foreign bank drafts for donations, worth Rs 1 crore each, were sent to the party treasury by a senior party functionary.
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Kesari has already been questioned in connection with these donations. The donations in question were received by the party during the tenure of former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao as party president. Officials of the directorate of investigation (income-tax) were tightlipped about the probe but sources said Kesari was reluctant to reveal the names of the person who donated the money. His answers were very wishy-washy, said one source, adding that he managed to buy time by promising that the names of the donors will have to be found out. A party source said Kesari and his successor, Ahmed Patel, had done all the paperwork, writing to the concerned foreign banks to let them know who had had these drafts issued. Of course, they wont reveal, he added, but we have done our homework.
It could not be ascertained whether Kesari or other party office-bearers will be summoned by the sleuths again for further questioning. The identity of overseas donors will have to be found out for the officials to get to the bottom of the case, said finance ministry sources, adding that a penalty could be levied on the party if it was found that they had concealed their income.
Sources said the I-T authorities are also looking into whether some donations received for party work were siphoned off for other purposes. Investi-gations carried out by the department so far has revealed that some firms to which contracts for advertising the partys programmes had been given for several years were not engaged in the advertising business at all.
An AICC source contested this, saying that all the contracts from the AICC for advertising had been given to well-known advertising firms. If others were also given, they were given and paid for from accounts other than the AICCs, he added. The probe had been taken up by the income-tax department after a public interest petition alleging that political parties had not been maintaining their books of accounts. The law stipulates that all donations above Rs 10,000 received by the party should also mention the name of the donor alongwith his address.
Kesari and party treasurer Ahmed Patel had also visited the office of the directorate of investigation (income-tax) last month after they had been served with notices for recording their statements in connection with the Sukh Ram case. Showing the I-T sleuths their books of account, the two Congress leaders had denied former communication ministers statement that Rs 3.61 crore seized from his residence in August belonged to the Congress party.
The probe is on at a time when the CBI is probing charges that Kesari has amassed property disproportionate with his known sources of income. The probe was launched after Madhuresh, who is said to have been close to the Congress president once, filed a petition. A report on this will be submitted to the Delhi High Court later this month.