Yesterday I got an email from Nishith Desai Associates with a subject “Investment Funds: Monthly Digest: New Overseas Investment Laws in India, Fund Formation and Raising; October 28, 2022.” The email address to which this “Monthly Digest” was delivered to is one that I have not published anywhere, have never used for registration on any website, and have mostly used it for my whistleblowing activities. So it begs the question as to how did Nishith Desai Associates get this email address?
It is obvious that they have gotten this from Deloitte with whom they have colluded in the cleanup exercise since the very beginning. Which also means that Deloitte was aware of my identity all this while, even though they have been consistently denying it. If they knew my identity then they would have also known the identity of my witness, and would have definitely shared it with Nishith Desai Associates. No wonder Nishith Desai Associates raided his house within 3–4 months of his conference call with Deloitte Ethics team.
After I wrote this post I thought a bit more. How and (more importantly) when did Deloitte and Nishith Desai Associates came to know my and my source’s identity? I also spoke with the authors of the Nishith Desai Associates blog who are familiar with what transpired at NDA. Even they are not sure because this exercise was orchestrated by Mr. Nishith Desai himself along with one or two senior firm members whom he trusts and even the associates who worked on the case were provided very limited information. However, they are certain that Mr. Nishith Desai came to know of the leak much before Parul actually joined NDA in November 2019. It is possible that Nishith Desai came to know of this even prior to my raising ethics concern in August 2019.
Here are some theories:
1. Deloitte during its investigation in my ethics concern spoke to Parul and she told them that it was most likely me who had filed the ethics concern because we had an unpleasant discussion on this topic earlier and I had refused to help her in this respect.
2. Deloitte also traced my source through his phone number because he was naive enough to use his phone number to get on the conference call with the Deloitte Ethics team after I had arranged that call on a promise that Deloitte would keep that call confidential.
3. Deloitte as part of the clean up exercise contacted NDA and this is how Mr. Nishith Desai came to know about my and my source’s identity. If this is true then it must have happened in late September or perhaps October 2019 because Deloitte did not appear to be taking my ethics concern seriously till I had agreed to arrange the conference call with my source.
4. The authors of the Nishith Desai Associates believe that Mr. Nishith Desai came to know of this not through Deloitte but through another channel. One possibility is that he came to know of this through an investigative agency as my source had also shared the stolen data with Advocate Prashant Bhushan who had in turn shared it with couple of investigative agencies in early 2019. Mr. Desai is well connected and it will not surprise me if they spilled the beans.
5. Another possibility is that Parul on seeing my reaction panicked and herself admitted about her stealing of data to Mr. Nishith Desai. Since the stolen data was highly incriminating for NDA, Mr. Desai offered her a job back at NDA so that she stays under his control. It provided a way for Mr. Desai to give this a twist of the dispute between Parul and my source and deflect the attention from the incriminating leak. I also provided him the necessary ammunition for the case against my source. For Parul also this deal worked out well because firstly it absolved her of stealing the data and provided her a formidable ally in her battle against my source. Deloitte was also happy with this deal because it enabled them to give my ethics concern a quiet burial.
6. There is another possibility which my source had alluded to before he cut off communication channel with me. He had confided he was working very closely with several journalists including Indian Express and ICIJ on this leak. But in February 2019 both Indian Express and ICIJ pulled out of this project. This was shortly followed by the raid at his residence. There is a small chance that some journalist approached Mr. Nishith Desai. This is not completely an impossibility because ICIJ which broke the “Mauritius Leaks” a few months later did actually include an interview with Mr. Nishith Desai in that story. The Indian Express group (which is the Indian partner of ICIJ) also appears to have a warm relationship with NDA as it has carried multiple interviews and quotes of Nishith Desai Associates. There was not even a whisper from Indian Express when The Pioneer broke the story of this leak in July 2021.
7. The authors of the Nishith Desai Blog also mentioned that there is a very small chance that someone from Advocate Prashant Bhushan’s office tipped off Mr. Desai. Though the chances of that being true are very slim.
Before closing, let me mention that the Nishith Desai Associates “Monthly Digest” email got flagged as spam by my email service provider with the following message:
This message may be malicious, which is why all the links and images in it are disabled. If you trust the sender, click “Not spam!”.
No, I do not trust the sender! But I now trust my email service provider even more. BTW, in the last 3–4 years that I have been using this email, only one other email was flagged as spam.
Update:
After I posted this, I got two more ‘hotlines’ from Nishith Desai Associates:
- Technology Law Hotline: Additional compliances for intermediaries under recently amended Intermediary guidelines; November 03, 2022
- Dispute Resolution Hotline: India-Scope of interim reliefs under the Arbitration Act are wider than the threshold under civil procedure laws governing litigation (Essar House v Arcellor Mittal); November 04, 2022
And none so far after this. I cannot say if the spamming has stopped or if this just a temporary respite. Nevertheless, I was curious why the first one landed in spam and the next two managed to dodge the spam filter of my illustrious email service provider. On checking with my email service provider I came to know that the first one landed in the spam folder because it had some ‘trackers’ which are used by hackers during their attacks. The next two emails were without such evil trackers (just had regular trackers for marketing) and therefore were not flagged as spam.
Perhaps this was an attempt to either trace me or to hack my account.
More update:
I had posted a link to this post on Reddit on. On Nov 12, within a couple of hours of that there were attempts to break into my reddit account. Reddit had to unlock my account as a precaution. I got it unlocked but then I got another message from Reddit on Nov 13 that there were more hacking attempts and my account had to be locked again. This leaves no doubt that Nishith Desai Associates is desperately trying to hack into my accounts.
