The Congress on Friday flashed the Volcker Committee report to attack its former member Natwar Singh.
AICC spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi said that Volcker Committee report with no connection with India or the Congress or even the Government had noted,“Natwar Singh’s family were non-contractual (corrupt) beneficiaries of the Oil for Food programmes”. The report went on to say that Singh, his son Jagat Singh and Jagat’s childhood friend Andaleeb Sehgal were associated with a company called Hamdan Exports which acted as an intermediary for illegal sales of oil to a Swiss firm named Masefield AG. In return for these illegal sales, Masefield paid kickbacks (termed ‘surcharge’) partly to Saddam Hussein’s regime because they were doing illegal oil export and partly to Natwar Singh and others who facilitated these exports. It was alleged that such kickbacks were the way in which further by sharing these kickbacks Saddam Hussein secured support from politicians around the world like Natwar Singh to oppose and to lobby against US policies in Iraq and the Middle East, Singhvi said quoting from Volcker report.
Singhvi said we can understand Natwar Singh’s peak and the underlying antagonism which is the subtext of his book.