2G spectrum row: How did Swan get the deal?
The Supreme Court reserved its verdict on examining the alleged role of home minister P. Chidambaram in the 2G scam case.
And now, additional documents have been submitted to SC to show how the finance ministry under him permitted Swan, a 'front' company of Anil Ambani’s Reliance Telecom, to offload its shares in the nick of time to make it eligible for the 2G spectrum licence.
Petitioners Subramanian Swamy and Prashant Bhushan in the documents and their written submissions submitted to a bench of justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly drew the attention of the court to the fact that finance ministry under PC had given clearance to Swan for offloading shares in favour of UAE based Etisalat and Mauritius based Delphi (9.9 per cent stakes).
CBI submitted to the trial court that Anil Ambani “is majority shareholder and chairman of Reliance Telecom and Swan was a company set up by it with Rs 1,000 crore fund as disguise” to enable Reliance to get 2G licence for GSM service in 20 circles where it was operating CDMA service.
Similar permission was allowed by the then finance minister to Unitech to offload its equity in favour of Telenor, the petitioners’ documents stated.
This was the reason why CBI had roped in Reliance’s three top officials – Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara, Swan’s Vinod Goenka and Unitech's Sanjay Chandra as alleged co-conspirators with Raja, his private secretary R.K. Chandolia and the then telecom secretary Siddhartha Behura, the papers said.
“Chidambaram had advised Raja that it was legal to ‘dilute’ the shares (mentioned in interlocutory application No. 24 on page 13). Swan Telecom and Unitech got a huge bonanza according to the CBI by releasing their 45 and 60 per cent equity respectively to two blacklisted firms – Etisalat and Telenor.”
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