When the Special Investigation Team probing illegal mining cases finds over a hundred crores in fixed deposits in the account of one small time trader who the SIT believes has links to former chief minister Digambar Kamat (denied strongly by the former Chief Minister), the extent and the seriousness of the mining loot is very palpable.
Let’s look at the figure of Rs 100 crores. This is more than 10% of the entire mining annual royalty that Goa received during the boom years between 2009 and 2011. There were over 460 traders many of them fly night involved in the transportation of iron ore, who started registering themselves only after the heat of investigation started. This actually means that the exercise of illegal transportation was carried out by hundreds of traders, and if like Imran Khan, made amounts even half of Rs 100 crores, can you imagine the amount of loot of the state’s resources and the loss to the exchequer which has happened.
It is this loot by traders which lies at the core of illegal mining. The phrase “illegal mining” should be wedded to the phrase “illegal transportation”. Often this critical nuance is missed.
The illegality lay in the logistics and even those who invested in the jetty business like businessman Anil Counto have been hauled up because the illegal trade of ore, happened through jetties which were leased by traders. But this is going to affect so many people, who have perhaps unknowingly, benefitted from the mining boom, through peripheral businesses like leasing jetties, owning and ferrying ore on boats and so on. Their alleged ‘illegality’ is by association, albeit unknowingly, with the master illegality being of traders extracting and transporting ore which was not legally complaint.
The role of these traders and their linkages with mine owners and politicians, is the crux of the mining scam. In July this year SIT arrested Philip Jacob of Amalagiri Traders. SIT investigations unearthed that the firm had a turnover of over Rs 500 crore and bank statements revealed that more than Rs 300 crore had been deposited by different exporters through RTGS transactions, and thereafter paid to mine owners in the state.
Another arrest was that of Gitesh Naik, a mining contractor from Dhavli-Ponda (Goa), in connection with an alleged illegal mining case at Korgao in Pernem taluka of North Goa, allegedly involving former Congress MLA Jitendra Deshprabhu.
What SIT will go into now, is whether politicians in power, including then Chief Minister Digambar Kamat, had at any point of time, misused their position to facilitate logistics and infrastructure which supported the illegal trade such as, according to SIT sources, the construction of jetty of iron ore exporting and approach road in Kothambi-Bicholim. The land was acquired by the Mines and Geology Department and not by the Public Works Department for the construction of road.
It is clear that the if the illegal mining loot has to be recovered and if there is any hope of getting back the lost resources of the state, the focus, has to be on these traders. And the SIT is indeed proceeding in the right direction because this is where the heart of this scam lies. Get the traders, and you get everyone else.
