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Iraq oil scam exporter Andaleeb Sehgal interrogated

     New Delhi: Andaleeb Sehgal, the owner of Hamdan Exports, whose name figures in the Volcker Inquiry Committee's list of beneficiaries of Iraqi oil pay-offs appeared and deposed before Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials on Monday in connection with the matter. A friend and a distant relative of Jagat Singh, the son of the External Affairs Minister, K Natwar Singh, Sehgal's house and offices were raided by ED officials on Sunday with the aim of recovering incriminating documents pertaining to Hamdan Exports. Sehgal arrived at the Directorate in response to an official notice accompanied by his wife and lawyer. Andaleeb, who has denied any business links with Jagat Singh or the Congress Party and rejected allegations of receiving commissions in Iraq's oil-for-food programme, has said that he would co-operate with the official probe into the matter. Notices asking him to appear with details of his bank accounts at the ED office at 10 a.m. on Monday were pasted outside his house and that of his father and father-in-law.

    The questioning of Andaleeb has so far been supervised by the ED chief Sudhir Nath. Sehgal had earlier ignored the ED's summons for 48 hours, which led a lookout circular being issued against him so that he could not slip out of the country. Sehgal and his Hamdan Exports have been named in the Volcker report as having paid 748,540 dollars to a Jordanian Bank as "illegal surcharge" for Iraqi oil, with the money eventually reaching Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who is currently under US detention in Baghdad. The payments were made on behalf of Swedish firm Masefield AG against oil rights allotted under the oil-for-food programme to Natwar Singh and the Congress party, according to the Volcker Report. Both Singh and his son Jagat have repeatedly denied having any business links with Sehgal. Natwar Singh has also rubbished reports of him resigning from the Union Cabinet in the wake of the controversy, saying that he has the full backing of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi. The opposition, led by the BJP, has stepped up the chorus for his resignation, saying that they will be meeting the President this afternoon to press him to carry out this directive. The Prime Minister and the Congress President have spent the past three days discussing the possible ramifications of the issue, which has led the Government into ordering a judicial inquiry under former Supreme Court Chief Justice R.S.Pathak.

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