CBI probes offloading of equity
The CBI, which said its probe into Reliance Telecomm was “continuing”, added that it was investigating how there could be such a huge gap in the sale of shares of a company in a relatively close period, what was the game plan behind this, and who was the “actual beneficiary” as the equity was off-loaded before
issuing of letters of intent for 2G spectrum on former communications minister A. Raja’s approval, by DoT, on January 10, 2008, the CBI counsel stated.
The allege offence against Reliance was that Swan had off-loaded 9.99 per cent stake in favour of Delfi at a much lower price — `15 per share — while it sold the same to Etisalat at the several times higher rate of `285 per share. The total transaction was of $76 million in foreign countries.
However, with regard to Tata and Datacom, the CBI counsel, reading out from a fresh status report, stated that “no criminality” was involved in their transactions with DoT.
Licences were issued to Tata under the existing “dual licence” policy, which makes a distinction between existing service providers and new entities applying for licences for the first time.
The CBI also cleared the Tatas of the allegation of selling a plot of land in Chennai, allegedly belonging to Voltas, to former Tamil Nadu chief minister Karunanidhi’s wife, saying the probe had revealed that the land actually did not belong to Voltas and was only given on lease to it. The matter was sub judice, he said. As far as Datacom was concerned, it was at number two in the list of contenders for licences in most circles and there was no major change in their position even after Mr Raja advanced the cut-off date for receiving applications from October 1, 2007 to September 25.
“There is no evidence of the involvement in any conspiracy by Datacom,” Mr Venugopal said.
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