Biz Buzz

Where is Ketan Parekh? Highly placed sources in the Central Bureau ofInvestigation (CBI) confirm that the the "Big Bull" has goneunderground and is not available at his swanky flat in downtown Mumbai. The CBIsleuths, who reached Parekh's home following reports of his Swiss Bank accounts,were told curtly by his family members that Parekh had gone on a longpilgrimage. The officers panicked, more so because Parekh was under orders fromthe court not to leave Mumbai. The officers then called the CBI chief who, inturn, contacted both Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha and Home Minister LalKrishna Advani and informed the duo of the situation. A massive manhunt has beenlaunched for the "Big Bull", whose recent wild run rattled the boursewith an estimated Rs 4,000 crore loss.

What is the latest on UTI and its troubled investments? Well, the buzz isthat besides probing charges of UTI's alleged insider trading and mismanagedinvestments, there are now chances that the investigating agency would also beasked to seek help from the Singapore Government about whether deposits weremade in the South-East Asian city's bank accounts by former UTI head P.S.Subramanyam's son-in-law or his associates. But this is not the end of thestory. Subramanyam - who has an inlkling that he could possibly be in a messsooner or later - has already indicated to the Finance Ministry that he hasmeticulously kept both tape recorded and scripted minutes of his meetings andconversations with senior bureaucrats over all questionable investments made byUTI in smalltime companies. And who were those? Two influential people (oneformer) from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and a member of the PrimeMinister's family.

Why are both the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad(VHP) baying for the mandarins at the Ministry of External Affairs? Well, it isbecause of something revolving around the eventual outcome of the forthcomingIndo-Pak summit. Highly placed MEA sources admit that both VHP and RSS are upsetwith Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Foreign Minister Jaswant Singhafter being told that Islamabad and New Delhi are veering towards what could beconstrued as the first India-Pakistan Working Group on Kashmir.Now if thatactually happens, then New Delhi will for the first time in history admit thatKashmir is not an internal issue but a disputed territory involving Pakistan.Sensing their concern, MEA officials told representatives of these two partiesthat even Islamabad would also agree that Sir Creek and Colonel Point (in theRann of Kutch) are disputed territories. But the hawks were still not pacifiedand have told the MEA in clear terms that admitting Kashmir as a disputedterritory involving Pakistan (and not an internal issue) would mean a virtualdefeat at the summit.

Meanwhile, news about the plans for the summit continues to pour in, bothfrom New Delhi and Agra. This is the latest, absolutely the latest. Listed onGen. Musharraf's agenda is a meeting with intellectuals at 0800 hours at Agra'sAmar Vilas. But as usual, both the MEA and PMO are in a major fix to finalisethe government's version of "true intellectuals", more so because theTaj city has none.

Will the Indian Government be able to solve the Enron crisis? Soundsunlikely, especially because the visiting Enron CEO Kenneth Lay waited fornearly 30 minutes before he could meet Power Minister Suresh Prabhu and themeeting between the two lasted for less than 15 minutes. And now, the Governmentis faced with yet another crisis which revolves around Dhabol Phase II.Presuming everything will be on schedule and the project would require LNGshipments, the Indian Government - through a tripartite agreement - had formedGreenfield Shipping, an Dhabol Power Corporation subsidiary involving Enron,Japanese giant Mitsui and the state-owned Shipping Corporation of India (SCI).Worse, an $230 million order for a LNG tanker was placed with Japan's MitsubushiCorporation. And now, Prabhu has been told that the tanker, Laxmi, is almostready and will be delivered by October 1, 2001. But with no power plants aroundand Dhabol Phase II still on paper, mandarins in the Power Ministry are in afix. Equally worried are lenders who funded the shipbuilding venture.

What does Mamata Banerjee want? PMO officials admit the former RailwayMinister - who recently had a meeting with the Prime Minister and former DefenceMinister George Fernandes - expressed her desire to get back in the Cabinet andacquire the Railway portfolio. And of course, a host of other issues including adetailed investigation on host of projects which fell flat in West Bengal.Vajpayee, who remained non-committal on most of the issues, made one clearpoint: Railways will remain with Nitish Kumar and Banerjee - if at all she isback in NDA - will have to contend with a relatively low-profile ministry. Didi,expectedly, was not pleased.

Ever since former Enron CEO Sanjay Bhatnagar talked of his ambitions ofinvesting in media companies, both in India and in the United States, he hasbeen flooded with a host of offers. The latest ones to reach his table in NewYork were from fairly well known persons: Karan Thapar of United Television (UTV)who wants to move lock-stock-and-barrel with all his four programmes to a newcompany where he will have a substantial stake and Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka.com.The last name even travelled all the way to New York for a detailed meeting.Tejpal, incidentally, also met Sabir 'Hotmail' Bhatia who declined help forinvestment. Bhatnagar, however, is yet to take a call on both. As for thechannels' gameplan, ZeeTV wants a Pan-Asian channel focussed for NRIs and isnegotiating with Raghav 'TV18' Behl for content which is strikingly similar forthe one TV18 supplies for CNBC Asia. Meanwhile, Sony Entertainment Television(SET), is finalising plans for an Urdu channel and has named it Aman.