By IANS, New Delhi : Former External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh and his son Jagat Singh Tuesday contended before the Delhi High Court that they needed all documents relating to the oil-for-food scam to defend themselves against the Enforcement Directorate’s probe against them for the alleged foreign exchange violations.
Advocate Arvind Nigam made the assertion before Justice B.D. Ahmed while arguing on a petition by the father-son duo seeking court’s direction to the centre to supply them all the documents, brought by India’s special envoy Virender Dayal from the United States.
Nigam alleged that some of the documents, being withheld by the government, could be useful for them to put their case before the authority.
“ED cannot be selective in providing the documents. It has excluded the host of documents and deliberately chose others to prosecute my clients,” Nigam contended.
He also alleged that the ED was harassing Singh by summoning for questioning without providing relevant documents.
Additional Solicitor General P.P. Malhotra, however, said the ED has already supplied all those documents on which it relied upon to issue show cause notice to Natwar Singh and his son.
Nigam said that the ED was conducting probe against them despite Justice Pathak Inquiry Authority report’s findings that the former minister did not derive any contractual benefit from the oil-for-food scam.
“ED completely ignored the directive of the government which had asked it to treat the report as a piece of information on the basis of which enquiry was to be conducted,” he contended.
The government had also accepted the report and tabled it in parliament in August 2006, he said.
Nigam also contended that the ED was not allowing the father son-duo to cross examine all the witnesses on whose testimony they have been issued with the show cause notice.
“They (ED) are not producing their witnesses so that we could cross examine them. Instead they are asking me to show cause why we need cross-examination,” Nigam said.
The counsel for the former minister argued that the ED could not proceed against him on the basis of the statement given by other accused allegedly involved in Iraq’s oil-for-food scam.
The arguments remained inconclusive and would continue Wednesday.
The ED is probing the alleged benefits received by a group of Indians, who were named in the United Nations appointed Volcker Committee’s which probed the scandal.
It is alleged that the suspects had earned a commission by selling petroleum products given on voucher by the then Iraqi ruler Saddam Hussein under the United Nation’s oil-for-food programme between 1996 and 2003.
Natwar Singh resigned as external minister after the publication of the Volcker report which mentioned his name as a non-contractual beneficiary in the scam.