Click to play videoNew Delhi: Telecommunications Consultants India Limited (TCIL), a public sector company, hit the headlines for alleged involvement in the Iraqi oil-for-food scam last year.
Now, the company is under the UN scanner in what appears to be illegal business practices.
It is suspected of violating UN regulations to recruit technical support staff for UN peacekeeping forces and flouting UN norms for immigration while sending over these recruits to war zones like Congo.
In India, those recruits are angry because they insist that they had paid large sums to a travel agent who did the recruitment on behalf of TCIL.
Their lawyer is talking tough. "For recruiting people to work in UN peace-keeping force, UN does not charge any money. On what contract are they charged this Rs 50,000? Not only the then Chairman of the TCIL, the Guru Trust investment, but the whole board should be prosecuted and the CBI should handover these people," says advocate R G James.
TCIL senior executives met telecom ministry officials on Friday afternoon, but both sides refuse to reveal what transpired.
In a statement, the TCIL said UN operations need quick responses to the UNDP's enquiries so TCIL had tied up with Guru Trust Investments in December 1999.
But in 2003, after TCIL gained adequate experience in UN operations, it set up its own office in New York and broke off with Guru Trust Investments.
Even the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) was tight lipped. Speaking of Sanjay Bahel, MEA Spokesperson, Navtej Sarna, said, "He is no longer in the service of the Government of India."
Bahel is one of the accused and was once a defence accounts committee employee, who had later served at the UN as its chief procurement officer. He later took voluntary retirement from Indian government service.
But the former defence accounts employee had gone on deputation to the United Nations in 1995. He had been picked up for allegedly accepting bribes from a middleman, Nishtant Kohli.
Kohli is a managining partner of Thunderbird Industries and allegedly an agent for TCIL. Kohli has been accused of buying out Bahel and winning contracts forGFX out TCIL. Bahel who was arrested on Wednesday is now out on bail.
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