CBI to freeze DoT officials’ accounts

Feb 04, 2011 - PRAMOD KUMAR |

Age Correspondent

New Delhi

With former telecom minister A. Raja and two other officials in CBI custody in connection with the 2G spectrum scam, the CBI is now set to freeze the bank accounts of certain officials of the department of telecommunications (DoT), including R.K. Chandolia and Sidhartha Behura (both arrested along with Mr Raja), as well as private persons after booking them under a disproportionate assets case.
According to sources, the disproportionate assets case is likely to be registered against those DoT officials, whose houses were recently raided by the CBI. Apart from Mr Chandolia, former personal secretary of Mr Raja, and Mr Behura, former telecom secretary, the other officials, against whom the case may be registered include member (telecom commission) K. Sridhar and deputy director-general in the DoT A.K. Srivastava. “On the basis of scrutiny of incriminating documents recovered from the residences of DoT officials during recent searches, possibility of registering disproportionate assets case against them can not be ruled out,” sources said. Decision to register disproportionate assets case against them will be taken in a day or two, sources added. The CBI had earlier registered a case against unknown officials of the DoT and representatives of certain private companies in connection with the award of Unified Access Service licence in 2009. The CBI is also preparing a list of those companies, which allegedly made the demand draft in advance to pay for the 2G licence, even before the announcement of the change in the first-come-first-serve policy. This clearly indicated that these companies prior information about the changes that were to be made in the policy, sources said. “Some of the DoT officials selectively leaked the information to some of the applicants regarding the date of issuance of letter of intent on January 10, 2008. In the letter of intent, an arbitrary condition was incorporated that whosoever deposited the fees first would be the first to get licence,” sources said.

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