Satish Sharma
| Satish Sharma | |
|---|---|
| MP of Rajya Sabha for Uttar Pradesh | |
|
In office 5th July 2010 – 4th July 2016 | |
| Personal details | |
| Political party | Indian National Congress |
Satish C. Sharma is an Indian politician. Representing the Indian National Congress party, he is a former member of the Union Cabinet in the Government of India. He has been accused in numerous scandals and irregularities in government deals whenever he/his party was in power. Sharma's political career has been boosted by his closeness to both Rajiv Gandhi, and after his assassination, his wife and the de facto political power center of the Congress party, Sonia Gandhi. He has held seats in the Lok Sabha at the behest of both the Nehru-Gandhi family and the electorate.
Satish Sharma was born on 11 October in Secunderabad, a city in the Indian state Telangana.He was educated in Col. Brown Cambridge School in Dehra Dun and was later trained as a pilot in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1991 he was elected to the Lok Sabha to Rajiv Gandi's constituency of Amethi following his assassination. From January 1993 until December 1996 he was Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership has protested against the move of the CBI to close 15 corruption cases registered by it in 1997 based on a complaint filed in January 1996 against Satish Sharma, who allegedly made illegal petrol pump allotments as minister. Former BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley has pointed to procedural faults in the CBI’s action, however the investigation did not find any actual concrete evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of Sharma.
In July, 2001, the CBI found documented evidence of dubious foreign exchange transactions of Satish Sharma which involve illegal foreign bank accounts and evidence of alleged money laundering. Through his late younger brother, Girish (Gary) Sharma of Augusta he funneled money via the Cayman Islands to buy assets in the United States in the nineties. These include a, now defunct, NYSE company, Regal International.
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In 2010, wikileaks cable showed his alleged involvement in bribing MPs to bolster support to crucial vote of confidence on the India-US nuclear deal in the Indian Parliament on 22 July 2008. The cable reveals that just five days before the Manmohan Singh government faced a crucial vote of confidence, Nachiketa Kapur, Sharma's political aide, showed a US embassy employee 'two chests containing cash' that Kapur said was part of a bigger fund of Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) to Rs 60 crore (Rs 600 million) that the Congress party had accumulated to buy the support of MPs for the trust vote.
References
External links
- Indian-express.com
- Business-standard.com
- Commoncauseindia.org
- Timesofindia.indiatimes.com
- Rediff.com
- Rediff.com