Anil Ambani in CBI sights
2G scam: Three ADAG executives may turn approvers
The CBI on Thursday threw a bombshell in the Supreme Court, saying it was still investigating Anil Ambani owning shares in Swan Telecom and later selling them to another company, Delphi, after three jailed Reliance ADAG officials denied their involvement in the 2G scam.
Appearing for the CBI, senior advocate K K Venugopal told a Bench of justices G S Singhvi and A K Ganguly that the probe agency was trying to find out the real beneficiaries as three top Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) executives had retracted their statements given in the course of the investigation.
The three senior Reliance Telecom officials – Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair – wanted to turn approver in the case, pleading in their bail petitions in the Delhi High Court that they were mere employees and not beneficiaries, Venugopal submitted. Earlier, they had claimed responsibility for all the decisions in the statement recorded under Section 161 of the Criminal Procedure Code by the CBI, the counsel said.
All the three, along with Reliance Telecom Ltd, were chargesheeted by the CBI on April 2 for allegedly entering into a criminal conspiracy to cheat the government by getting licences in an illegal manner. They were accused of using a front company to circumvent the rules in 2008 to get additional licenses and spectrum for Reliance Telecom.
The trio reportedly formed Swan out of funds from Reliance Telecom, with the common intention to cheat. They violated Unified Access Service Licence (UASL) guidelines that a company which was already operating as a telecom service provider in a circle could not get another license through a subsidiary. Venugopal maintained that the CBI was still investigating the role of Anil Ambani, but had found no evidence regarding the culpability of others like Tata Group, Videocon owned Datacom and Attorney General G E Vahanvati in the 2G spectrum allocation scam case.
“The role of Ambani and other employees in relation to 9.9 per cent share in the Swan Telecom which was sold to Delphi is being probed,” Venugopal said while giving details of the transaction that took place among Swan, Delphi and Etisalat DB.
“Reliance ADAG had 9.99 percent shares in Swan. Swan had sold its 107.90 lakh shares to Delphi at the rate of Rs 15 per share and Etisalat had bought the shares from Delphi at the rate of Rs 285 per share. The shares given to Delphi were grossly undervalued and Reliance had received $4 million,” Venugopal said while reading out reports received from Mauritius in response to a Letter Rogatory.
In his submission, the counsel rejected the contention of advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner NGO CPIL, alleging that the CBI had not carried out investigation fairly against Tata group.
Instead of being a beneficiary of the scam, Tata group was the loser because of the conspiracy on the part of Raja. “Tata Teleservices was put last in the list of companies (for allotment of spectrum in a circle) because of criminal conspiracy of the accused. It was a loser in it, as has also been said by the TDSAT,” Venugopal said.
He further said that the allegation that the Tatas had gifted land to the Karunanidhi family for getting undue favour from Raja was “factually incorrect”.
“Tata did not gift land owned by Voltas to the DMK family. It was not even owned by the Voltas (Tata's company). The land was on lease and it is still on lease. There is no change in the possession of the land. The matter with regard to extension of lease is sub judice,” he said.
The CBI also submitted that probe was still on with regard to donations given by several corporate houses to an NGO run by Kanimozhi.
In the dock
* The CBI has charged Reliance Telecom Ltd (RTL) and its three top executives with “complicity” in the 2G scam
* Doshi, Pipara and Nair, along with the company, have been charge-sheeted for entering into a criminal conspiracy to cheat the government by getting spectrum licences
illegally
* The agency had earlier alleged that RTL used Swan
Telecom, a firm ineligible for getting the licence, as its front company to get licences
* Swan, at the time of application, was an associate of RTL, the CBI has said
* It has also said that Tiger Trader Pvt Ltd, which held
maturity stake in Swan Telecom Pvt Ltd, was also an
associate company of Reliance ADAG
* “Both the companies had no business history and were activated solely for the purpose of applying for UAS licences in 13 telecom circles,” the first charge sheet in the case said
