Last Thursday afternoon I was cranky and beginning to get a bit frantic--my boss had been MIA all day despite the fact that we'd promised to get a time-sensitive affidavit out the door for a South African NGO who was filing a class action suit against a consortium of mining companies. The South African NGO had already chased me twice that day to ask for the missing affidavit, so as you can imagine I was chomping at the bit once my boss entered the office around 5pm.
He was in a good, celebratory mood. "We had a good, big victory in court today," he said. "The judge made an important interim decision in our favor."
I didn't care. I was like, "That's great, Mr. Bossypants, but we need to focus and get this affidavit out the door now." I then grumpily sat in his office for the next hour while he rotated between going through the affidavit with me and accepting phone call congratulations. "Focus, Bossypants! Focus!"
Well, when I opened the paper on Saturday morning, I felt a bit ashamed of myself. My boss's courtroom victory had made front page news. And not just in my morning paper--every paper I've looked at in the past few days has been talking about it. Of course, as I've been reading the story I'm beginning to understand what a HUGE deal this is.
Basically, my boss just took down the head of India's central bureau of intelligence (CBI). (This is like India's FBI.)
It's like this, see. My boss has been appointed the Special Public Prosecutor by the Supreme Court on a nationwide corruption case called the 2G scam case. To make a long story, very very short (though you can read more about the case here if you're interested), companies bidding for the right to internet providers in various states bribed high ranking government officials to ensure their tender won the bidding process. This is a BIG deal; the amounts in question are about USD $490 million and, according to Time magazine, the scam was listed as the second biggest abuse of power, just after the Watergate scandal.
Now, as a side story, once the corruption of these officials came to light a number of them went to go see the head of the CBI who was overseeing the investigation against him. When asked if he had met with the allegedly corrupted officials, Mr. Head of the CBI denied it and produced his office's visitor's log to prove none of the officials had come out.
Course, it turns out Mr. Head of CBI kept two visitor's logs--an official one and an unofficial one--and only produced the official one to show that he hadn't been meeting with the allegedly corrupt officials whose improprieties he was investigating. However, the unofficial log, which eventually came to light, shows that the allegedly corrupt officials and Mr. Head of CBI were BFFs.
So, yeah, basically the Mr. Head of CBI is sketchy as hell and almost certainly totally corrupt. (I mean, just look at his picture--doesn't he just look slimy?) The victory in court consisted of my boss accusing him of interfering with the investigation into the corruption, and the Supreme Court agreeing and removing him from the head of the investigation. If you ask me, it sounds like this CBI dude should also be investigated for being corrupt as hell, but since he's led a "storied" career and is set to retire next week, apparently the Supreme Court will let this one slide.
Indian, man. Never a dull moment!
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