The Great Cobbler Scam - $600 million shoes scam

A lot of scams are being discovered in India. It looks like the corruptions in India can never come to an end. If one corruption is exposed another one start somewhere. It reminds me one of the biggest multi million dollars scam in Indian History which was nicknamed The Great Cobbler Scam.

Actually what really happened in this Great Cobbler Scam was that various businessman & politicians had siphoned around $600 million US dollars from a scheme that was floated by the Government of India meant to benefit the poor cobblers of Mumbai. Instead it went into the pockets of wealthy elite peoples who used this money to built luxury homes for themselves and also brought luxury cars, boats, arts...etc.

The money of the scheme was meant to provide low interest loans and tax concessions to the Mumbai's poorest - cobblers who work 16-hours a day for less than $2. Not a single penny reached these cobblers.

The modus operandi of the mastermind was to float a cooperative society of cobblers to avail of soft government loans through various schemes. Several bogus societies of cobblers were formed only for the purpose of availing these soft government loans.

The people involved in this racket were Saddrudin Daya, former sheriff of Mumbai and owner of Dawood Shoes, Rafique Tejani, owner of Metro Shoes, Kishore Signapurkar, proprietor of Milano Shoes, and Abu Asim Azmi, president of Samajwadi Party's Mumbai unit and partner in Citywalk Shoes,

Beside them various officials of banks and financial institutions were also involved in this multi million dollars Cobbler Scam.

The Banks whose officials were involved in this scam are : Maharashtra State Finance Corporation, Citibank, Bank of Oman, Dena Bank, Development Credit Bank, Saraswat Co-operative Bank, and Bank of Bahrain and Kuwait.

This scam cost the Government of India around $600 million US dollars.

This was one of the worst scam in India that cheated the poorest people of the society and benefited a lot of rich and elite people. This is one of the cause that proverty in India is difficult to eliminate.