Vaz in fresh controversy

Vaz in fresh controversy
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

JAN 28: Britain's embattled Foreign Office Minister Keith Vaz has been caught in a fresh controversy with opposition Tories claiming that he may have been involved in efforts by the NRI businessmen Hinduja brothers to set up an Asian bank in the country.

Friends of Vaz, who is already fighting to avoid becoming the second ministerial victim of the granting of passports to the Hindujas, have denied that he was involved in pressing the Bank of England to grant the Hinduja brothers a banking licence, the Sunday Times reported today.

A former Conservative Minister claimed that Vaz's interest in the Hinduja brothers' banking ambitions followed a decision by the bank to reject an application from Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja in the late 1980s for a licence to offer banking services to the Asian community, the report said.

At the time, the brothers were facing media allegations that they had acted as middlemen in the Bofors gun deal, it said.

"The bank sought advice from the foreign office. The advice was that they were not to be touched," an official told the former minister, who was not named in the report.

The claims follow the resignation last week of Peter Mandelson, Northern Ireland Secretary, over his role in an application for a British passport by Srichand Hinduja.