G. When Rajiv Gandhi married Sonia Gandhi on February 25, 1968, she was poor. Her Father Stefano Maino had lost everything after his party leader, Benito Mussolini, the II Duce of Fascist Italy, was overthrown and killed. After World War II, Stefano became a brick layer, and Sonia’s mother, Paola Predebon, a share cropper. Like many poor Italian families, Sonia was dispatched to learn English in a teaching shop in Cambridge town and thus land a job as an hostess or in similar employment, a modest goal indeed. Her marriage to Rajiv Gandhi on 25.2.68 however changed all that. And because of the aforesaid illegal activities, the Maino family became in just 25 years the richest family of Italy with net worth of US $ 2.0 billion. The respected Swiss magazine, Schweizer Illusttrierte, in its November 1991 issue, reported that the Mainos had in 1991 about $2.7 billion. But over the 1990s decade, the Mainos appear to have lost some of the money due to reckless investments, collapse of the Barings Bank, and ostentatious spending. They are still worth about US $2.0 billion today. H. Ms.Sonia Gandhi has also fully utilized the martyrdom of her husband Rajiv Gandhi to advance her political career as well as to take control of the Nehru family’s monetary inheritance. The Rajiv Gandhi Foundation was set up under her chairmanship and Rs.200 crores collected during Narasimha Rao’s tenure as PM, for use in education and public affairs. Yet an analysis of the accounts of the Foundation show that only 3% of the income is being used for the stated objectives while 97% is deployed for other goals including for private travel of Ms.Gandhi and her chosen ones. This is a violation of the Trust Act and thus Ms.Gandhi and other trustees can be proceeded under Section 92 of the CPC. There is already a PIL in the Delhi High Court in this matter. 3. Circumstantial evidence is also fast accumulating that makes it now imperative for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe whether the mother (Ms.Paola Maino) and sister (Ms.Anushka Vinci) of Ms.Sonia Gandhi, have had a long term continuing association since 1984 with the terrorist organization, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), The Supreme Court had delivered on May 12, 1999 a stinging judgement that held the LTTE responsible for the assassination of India’s former Prime Minister Mr.Rajiv Gandhi. The Government had set up a Multi Disciplinary Monitoring Agency (MDMA) in August 1998, led by the CBI, to probe leads such as that have now surfaced regarding the Maino-LTTE links.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 08:21:00 +0000
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