Within a day or two, a tsunami hit me. Aniel Mathrani, a junior functionary of the Congress and the Indian Ambassador to Croatia, gave an interview to India Today saying that the Congress Party and I had asked for vouchers for oil barrels to be allocated to me during a visit to Iraq in 2001. Mathrani had worked under me in the Foreign Affairs department of the All India Congress Committee. In his interview, he said, ‘Of course, he [Natwar Singh] knew all these things from the beginning but preferred to keep quiet. […] That Natwar and the Congress never knew is hogwash.’
