The leftist media portal, Newsclick exchanged communications with the controversial US millionaire Neville Roy Singham, who is on the payroll of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to peddle a Chinese narrative in India as reported by Times Now. Times Now reported that it has accessed some of the emails that the duo exchanged with each other.
Reportedly, on the 6th of January, 2021 at 5:09 PM, Singham sent an email to many individuals in which Newsclick Editor-in-Chief Prabir Purkayastha was one among those many receivers.
One of the purported emails read, “I think we missed the dotted line between India and China to the (left of Bhutan)”, while seemingly discussing issues about the India-China border dispute. It adds, “Clearly China and India will have to have two maps inside their countries.”
Along with an attached controversial map that peddles the Chinese agenda, the email goes on to say, “Here is a map from Diplomat where China claims Arunachal Pradesh.”
The purported email exchanges were seemingly a part of Chinese dictation to leftist media portals in the likes of Newsclick to parrot the Chinese line, irrespective of the fact that it violates and impinges on national interest or goes against our stated sovereign boundaries.
The allegation against Newsclick of peddling a Chinese narrative at the behest of US millionaire Neville Roy Singham stems from the fact that there is a transactional history between Newsclick and several organisations linked with Singham. It is alleged that Newsclick clandestinely received huge tranches of money from Singham who is doing the bidding for CCP throughout the world in lieu of money from the Xi Jinping regime.
NYT report exposes wide Chinese web that extends even in India
Although the allegation that Newsclick received unaccounted money from foreign sources and was indulging in financial irregularities among other criminalities – these were unearthed after ED raids on the news portal – the issue recently came back to the limelight after an expose by the New York Times.
Evidently, on Saturday (August 5), The New York Times published a detailed article, revealing the ties of an American businessman with the Chinese government and his financial support to the Indian leftist propaganda outlet named NewsClick.
According to the US-based newspaper, a millionaire named Neville Roy Singham is funding several news publications across the world (including India) to peddle Chinese propaganda.
“In New Delhi, corporate filings show, Mr. Singham’s network financed a news site, NewsClick, that sprinkled its coverage with Chinese government talking points. “China’s history continues to inspire the working classes,” one video said,” noted The New York Times.
News Click received ‘unaccounted’ foreign funding to the tunes of several crores
Earlier, on February 9, 2021, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) raided the home of News Click founder and Editor-in-Chief Prabir Purkayastha.
According to the sources in ED, NewsClick had received ₹10 crores under Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from an American company. Interestingly, its founder Purkayastha had no idea why the American company had transferred the money to his company’s account. He could not give any proof of work that he had done for the particular company.
Further investigation revealed that another US-based company gave NewsClick ₹20 crores and marked it as ‘Export Remittance’. The money was transferred because NewsClick had uploaded content on a portal named People’s Dispatch.
Moreover, it was revealed that Purkayastha also took ₹1.5 crore rupees in the name of maintenance. Interestingly, he had hired a ninth-class pass electrician for maintenance at his office. The money he took was without any documentation, which made it impossible for him to explain the transaction to ED.
Later, in July 2021, the ED informed that the investigation into the money laundering case against ‘NewsClick’ had revealed that the promoters of the media outlet received nearly ₹38 crores from entities, which might be associated with the Communist Party of China.
An officer probing the money laundering case revealed that NewsClick had financial dealings with a Sri Lankan-Cuban-based businessman named Neville Roy Singham, who allegedly funnelled Rs 38 crore to PPK Newsclick Studio Pvt Ltd between 2018 and 2021 from abroad.
As stated recently in the New York Times extensive report, the ED officials, who had traced the money flow of the media outlet, also had said that Singham is associated with the propaganda arm of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
