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Vadra
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New Delhi, Oct 6: Robert Vadra, whose deals with realty major DLF have been questioned, today broke his silence on Facebook through a brief but emotional post.
“Thanks so much for your concern. I am fine and can handle all the negativity,” he wrote, a day after Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan held a news conference to allege that DLF had given Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law interest-free loans and sold him property at throwaway rates.
Vadra further wrote: “Lost people I loved, what can be worse?” The cryptic message was seen as a reference to the untimely deaths of his father Rajinder, brother Richard and sister Michelle.
DLF, which had yesterday said the deals were “transparent” and conducted “to the highest standards of ethics”, today denied the two allegations as “completely baseless and untrue”.
The company said in a statement it had never sold Vadra property at below-market rates nor ever given him an interest-free loan. DLF said its relationship with Vadra has been “in his capacity as an individual entrepreneur” and “at an arm’s length basis”. While it accepted giving him Rs 65 crore, the company said this was “business advances for the purchase of land….”
The Congress continued to fight back the allegations for the second day today, with finance minister P. Chidambaram saying in Mumbai that business deals between two private individuals cannot be questioned just like that.
“I am not aware of the rightness or wrongness of the allegations.... Transactions between two private individuals cannot be questioned on the basis of certain imputed or implied act of corruption,” Chidambaram said.
“In fact what I have gathered is” that these transactions are between two private individuals and they have been disclosed in the appropriate income tax and other returns, the minister said.
Support for Kejriwal came from Anna Hazare, with whom he has split to join politics, who said from his village Ralegan Siddhi that a judicial probe should be ordered. If the allegations were proved false, the Congress could sue Kejriwal for defamation, he said.
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