Proud leaders in crime.

The wealth of Ponty Chadha, who was shot by his own brother in a farmhouse in Delhi over a property dispute 12 days ago, has been speculated to be around Rs 500 billion. We are told that he was given sole contract for supplying mid-day meals to children in government schools in UP against the ruling by the Supreme Court that such meals should be provided only by panchayats, meaning village councils, or mahila mandals meaning women's groups. He also had monopoly license to sell alcoholic drinks in the whole of UP and hence the power to price them at will and was about to be awarded sole contract to supply nutrition supplements for children to anganwadi or social workers. He obtained these contracts regardless of whether SP or BSP was in power. However, Ponty was small fry compared to stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan who was arrested in Pune in July 2011. He is said to have declared an income of Rs 1.1 trillion between 2001-2 and 2007-8, all of it black, and the Income Tax department has demanded Rs 503.46 billion in back taxes. Officials suspect that he has stashed $8 billion in Swiss banks but these banks deny any knowledge of Khan. So far officials have managed to trace a negligible Rs 325 million in one Swiss account. Everyone is mystified as to his source of wealth and Khan is not talking. Some guess that he was a conduit for politicians and industrialists who wanted to transfer money abroad through hawala channels and others think that he was involved with arms dealer Adnan Khashogi. What is known is that he was investigated by the Mumbai police, the IT department, stock market regulator SEBI, the RBI and the passport division and was jailed in 2010 for owning a fake passport. Son of a Hyderabad Excise Officer he is said to have been introduced to his partner, Kashinath Tapuria by the Congress Chief Minister of Andhra, Vijay Bhaskara Reddy. Khan is known to possess multiple Indian passports and has traveled abroad extensively. The central government is trying very hard to entice ordinary people to invest in the stock market knowing that it is totally manipulated. The largest number of investors in shares are in Gujarat. No wonder then that in the last 3 years Gujarat had 15 of 27 companies that raised money from investors and then vanished. " Retail investors in Gujarat have lost Rs 5 billion in such companies. Most directors of vanishing companies have started different businesses or the company operates under a different name," said Hemantsinh Zala, Chairman, Ahmedabad Stock Exchange. TOI, 26 November. Meanwhile the SEBI is trying to work out how to stop a form of insider trading called " front running " in which a broker uses knowledge of a large order of share transaction to buy or sell for himself to take advantage of the change in price that such a large order will bring. India maybe behind on every index of progress but we are leaders in crime. Our politicians make us proud.