Piyush Goyal defends Jay Amit Shah against charges of financial impropriety

Piyush Goyal

Union Minister Piyush Goyal sought to rebut charges laid out against Jay Shah, son of BJP President Amit Shah, in an article by the news portal The Wire.

At a press conference, Goyal said the article put out by the publication was “false, baseless, malicious and derogatory” and said the allegations against a commodity-trading firm owned by Jay Shah whose turnover rose by 16,000 times soon after the BJP came to power, as per the website, were “without substance”.

The article also questioned loans given to another of his companies for a power project.

Goyal, the erstwhile power minister, said that Shah’s businesses were conducted in a legitimate manner on commercial lines, which are reflected in his tax records and banking transactions.

“All the loans were taken strictly in accordance with law on commercial rates of interest, securities were provided and the loans paid back in full with transactions,” the minister said.

Goyal added that revenues clocked by Shah’s commodity-trading firm, about Rs 80 crore, were not “abnormally high” in that business and pointed out that it later incurred losses and closed down.

He also said that it was not unusual for the second firm named in the piece to venture into the unrelated power business, pointing to his own career and saying he started an engineering company after completing his chartered accountancy.

The minister added that Shah had decided to sue the author of the piece, the editor and owner of The Wire for the “malicious” piece.

Earlier in the day, Congress' Kapil Sibal had held a press conference asking the government to open an investigation into the charges.