Buffoonery, smear campaign: Puri hits out at Rahul’s Epstein remark

According to Puri, after two emails bearing his name emerged in the public domain, Congress spokespersons inquired who had introduced him to Epstein.

He said all facts related to the three million emails which had been released from the Epstein Files were in the public domain.

He said during the Samvidhan Diwas celebrations last year, Gandhi “winked at him” and mentioned that his name was “at interesting places”. He said he even sent the Congress leader a note.

Puri said he was in the US for eight years from May 2009 when he joined as India’s ambassador to the United Nations in New York and when he became a Minister in 2017.

“There are references to possibly two or three meetings in eight years… In that note, I told him that after I retired as India’s ambassador to the UN, a few months later I was invited to join the International Peace Institute… set up many, many years earlier for the purposes of international peacekeeping by the UN; but I was not part of the IPI per se, I was Secretary General of something called the Independent Commission on Multilateralism,” he said.

“This was a commission set up in the IPI as a project to see if the United Nations was fit for purpose on the occasion of its 75th anniversary… The chair was the former Prime Minister of Australia… My boss in the IPI, Mr. Terje Rod-Larsen, was a person who knew this particular infamous person, Mr Epstein, and it is as part of a delegation of the IPI or the ICM that I met Mr Epstein on a few occasions – three or maximum four,” he said.

In eight years, Puri said, there were two references and one email which was exchanged following his introduction to Reid Hoffman, the founder of professional networking platform LinkedIn.

The Epstein Files, he said, were “about wrongdoing, criminal offences”. These, he also said, included charges “about an island where he used to take people to indulge their sexual fantasies… of paedophilia and victims of this”.

“Those victims have brought cases against the people in authority; my interaction has got nothing to do with that,” Puri said before reading out from the email in question and quoting his statements on India being the fastest growing country for internet users, then newly-elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s focus on reviving the Indian economy based on expanding rural internet coverage and the ‘Make in India’ campaign.

“Here is a professional – I was not even part of the government (at that time) – in the month of November 2014; I was a private citizen. Somebody says they want to look at India (for opportunities), we have a meeting with Reid Hoffman, who is the founder of LinkedIn… and that he should visit India to see the changes which are coming,” he said.

Puri also quoted from an email exchange between Larsen and Epstein where he was described as “two-faced” in reference to the fact that he had not exhibited “any interest” in “what they were dealing in”.

Puri said since both Rahul Gandhi and his sister Priyanka Gandhi Vadra had not properly read the contents of the email which they had referred to, he became known across the world due to “this buffoonery”.

“I want to thank them that they took my name. There are many people in the world who would not have known of me, but now they do, thanks to this kind of buffoonery… These are the hard facts,” he said.

“There is an entertainment value, I said there are elements of buffoonery, but please, since you made a reference to me… this innuendo and smear campaign has given me the privilege and opportunity to… place the facts,” he said.

On the India-US trade deal, Puri said it is “top class” given the prevailing geopolitical and diplomatic scenario. For India, he said, international agreements and free trade deals are “critically important”.

“Which other country has been able to conclude nine trade agreements in such a short span of time? The whole world is praising Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi ji for reforming India and transforming it from a 2-trillion to a 4-trillion dollar economy, moving it from the 10th position to the 4th, and now towards the 3rd place,” he said.

The IMF, Puri said, had also raised India’s growth forecast from 6.6% to 7.3%, and trade deals with 27 EU countries, which had been pending for 16 years, had been inked.

“The trade deal is a top class deal because… the world situation has changed. Earlier you were dealing with multilaterally-negotiated trade agreements. Here, one party has unilaterally come and changed the ground rules. Within that you have been able to bring it (tariff) down from 50% to 18%,” he said.

“And, this is the framework of an interim deal…(Foreign Secretary) Vikram (Misri) has already said categorically: We are committed, India is committed to our consumer. During the last 10 years, in the midst of global turmoil, there has never been a shortage of energy. Availability has been there at all times… We have some of the lowest energy prices. We will buy from wherever we have to in order to ensure that the demands of the consumer are satisfied and we have diversified our supply,” he said.