New
Delhi, Former IPL chief Lalit Modi today challenged the enforcement directorate
to prove any charge against him. He also admitted to ‘very close’
relations with Vasundhara Raje and Sushma Swaraj’s family.
Holidaying in the tiny Balkan nation of Montenegro,
Modi told Rajdeep Sardesai of India Today TV channel in an interview that Raje
had accompanied his wife to Portugal for her cancer treatment two years ago.
Raje became chief minister of Rajasthan for the second time in December 2013.
The comments of the tainted former IPL Commissioner
assume significance because it came hours after it was reported that Raje had
given a “Witness Statement” in August 2011 to British authorities supporting
his case for immigration in Britain which he has made his base after fleeing
from India where he faces serious charges of money laundering and FEMA
violations. Raje’s purported “witness statement” was made public earlier in the
day on behalf of the Modi camp but later tonight the Chief Minister said she
was not aware of this document. “Of course I know the family. I have always
known them…(But) I do not know what documents they are talking about,” she told
reporters in Jaipur. In the interview Modi said, “My relationship with
Vasundhara Raje goes back 30 years. That relationship is known to everybody. She
is a close friend of the family and my wife for a long time…She openly agreed
to be (to be a witness), but unfortunately by the time the case went to trial,
she was already chief Minister, so she did not come to become a witness. The
statements she gave are all on records in the courts.”
“Raje
and Sushma supported me when my wife was sick,” he said. “It was a family, a
legal whatever you may call it. We were very close. But the point is not that…I
am very close to a lot of politicians, not only Mrs Swaraj…,” Modi said when
asked about his relationship with Sushma Swaraj.
“My
wife was being taken to Portugal by whom, by Mrs Vasundhara Raje. Nobody knows
that, I am putting that on record now,” Modi said, adding she accompanied his
wife Minal in 2012 and 2013. The surfacing of the “witness statement” gave a
new twist to the controversy surrounding External Affairs Minister Sushma
Swaraj’s help to Modi to seek British travel documents. “I did ask her (Swaraj)
help,” Modi said, adding that he would have made a similar plea to any other
External Affairs Minister in office.
“I
know Swaraj Kaushal(Sushma’s husband) for 20 years. He has been my advocate for
20 years…his daughter Bansuri had been my advocate for four years,” he said,
adding that their services had been provided “free of cost”. The Witness
Statement came into circulation just hours after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley
backed Swaraj saying whatever she had done was in good faith and bona fide. The
document had a confidentiality clause in which Raje purportedly supported
Modi’s case but did not want it to be revealed to Indian authorities.
Swaraj
found herself at the centre of a political firestorm after the UK-based Sunday
Times reported a “leaked conversation” between influential Labour MP Keith Vaz
and head of UK Visas and Immigration Sarah Rapson that cited Swaraj to
facilitate travel documents for Lalit Modi.
The TV channel also quoted Modi having told it that
he was also helped by NCP leaders Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel and Congress
leader Rajiv Shukla. Shukla said he had not talked to Modi for three years
while Pawar said he tried to convince the former IPL chief to return to India
and face investigations. To a question, Modi said he was not travelling to India
because of security concerns.
Asked
about his holiday in the famous Ibiza resort three days after the surgery of
his wife, Modi said the family decided to celebrate because the “revolutionary
treatment” received at the Portugal medical centre helped her because the liver
cancer she was suffering from was in the final stage.
Modi said he had done no wrong and has always gone
by the book and that he has paid all his dues. Modi said he has been taken to
task by the previous UPA government and asserted he was no “fugitive”.
He
also accused the UPA government of making him a target of “political vendetta”
in the aftermath of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor losing his ministerial job
following the IPL scam. Modi started the interview, which was conducted on the
shores of the Adriatic coast, with a remark that he lived “life Kingsize”. (Source- www.newsroompost.com)
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