Indian Origin Businessman Fooled Indonesian President ?

A classic case of conmanship has been unearthed as an Indian-origin businessman named Gaurav Srivastava is facing serious accusations after allegedly involving in a high-profile diplomatic breach. He reportedly pretended to be a secret agent for the US Central Intelligence Agency (the CIA) to get his hands on multibillion-dollar military deals in Indonesia. He was born in Lucknow and later moved to USA.

Reportedly, Srivastava used his fake spy identity to get close to Prabowo Subianto, who was Indonesia’s defence minister at the time and is now the country’s president. Srivastava became so close to the leader that he nicknamed himself “Mr. G.” He even joined Prabowo at high-level government meetings in Washington and Jakarta to talk about buying heavy military equipment.

To make people believe his story, Srivastava reportedly made some huge claims on recorded phone calls. He told people he helped catch the terrorists behind the tragic 2002 Bali bombings and claimed he used his high-level connections to get Prabowo removed from a US travel blacklist.

Because Indonesian officials believed he was a real US insider, Srivastava’s companies managed to sign five early military agreements between 2020 and 2022. However, the fake identity has been exposed when investigators discovered that the four companies Srivastava used to sign these agreements were just shell companies.

The fraud came to light when Srivastava’s former business partner, Niels Troost, realized he had been fooled. Troost had actually given Srivastava a 50% stake in his own company because he truly believed Srivastava had powerful US intelligence connections. Troost has now filed lawsuits against him in New York and California.

But, Srivastava categorically denied allegations of fraud, extortion, and misrepresentation in the lawsuit. He claims the audio recordings of him claiming to be a CIA operative are fabricated and maintains that he is the victim of a calculated disinformation campaign orchestrated by his former business partner.