Haridas Mundhra ( हरिदास मूंदड़ा) was a Calcutta-based industrialist and stock speculator who was found guilty and imprisoned in the first big financial scandal of free India in the 1950s. The Mundhra scandal exposed the rifts between the then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his son-in-law Feroze Gandhi, and also led to the resignation of India's then finance minister T. T. Krishnamachari.
In 1957, Mundhra got the government-owned Life Insurance Corporation
(LIC) to invest Rs. 12.4 million at that time in
the shares of six troubled companies belonging to Mundhra: Richardson
Cruddas, Jessops & Company,
Smith Stanistreet, Osler Lamps, Agnelo Brothers and British India
Corporation. The investment was done under governmental pressure and
bypassed the LIC's investment committee, which was informed of this
decision only after the deal had gone through. In the event, LIC lost
most of the money.
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