AIADMK general secretary J. Jayalalithaa on Thursday sought cancellation of all 2G licences alleging that the spectrum money trail showed links to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.
In a hard-hitting statement here, she claimed that a shareholder of one of the companies benefited by the spectrum is a front man of Dawood.
“Within months of getting the licence — a mere sheet of paper — and before any tangible steps had been taken to roll out operations, Swan Telecom sold 45.37 per cent of its stake to the UAE-based telecom company, Etisalat for `4,500 crores,” she said. The company was renamed Etisalat DB (Dynamix Balwa), after 16 per cent of its stakes were sold to the Chinese telecom gaint, Huawei Technologies, and 5.27 per cent of its shares were handed over to Genex Exim Ventures Pvt Ltd, a Chennai-based letter pad company, registered three months earlier with a capital of `1 lakh. She said the real estate circles of Mumbai regard Shahid Balwa, one of the major shareholders of Etisalat DB, as a front man for Dawood Ibrahim, the man behind Mumbai blasts. “It was this suspected link that forced the Union home ministry to put an unusual rider that the main Indian promoter of Swan should not be on the board of directors of the company,” she said.
“The question is now no longer just one of causing a loss of `1.80 lakh crores to India. It is the question of the security, sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Indian nation,” she said.
She also asked the Union home ministry as to why it maintained “stoic silence” when it was aware of these issues.