New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation have not summoned Unitech Ltd managing director Sanjay Chandra as part of a probe into whether some companies received favourable treatment in the granting of telecoms licences, an official told Reuters on Monday, denying earlier media reports.
"Nobody has been summoned at the moment," S.K. Palsania, one of the investigators, told Reuters.
"We reiterate that the alleged rumours about the Unitech MD - Mr Sanjay Chandra being summoned by CBI or arrested are completely baseless, false and erroneous," Unitech said in a statement.
After the arrest of Swan Telecom promoter Shahid Balwa a few weeks ago, the CBI's focus shifted to Unitech - who earned a quick profit of nearly 267 per cent by off-loading 60 per cent of shares after getting spectrum in 2007-08.
The charges against Unitech, according to the CBI's FIR, was that it offloaded 60 per cent of its shares to Telenor, a Norway-based telecom company and earned a profit of 267 per cent even before the roll out.
"M/s Unitech was alloted UAS licences for 22 cricles for Rs 1658 crore. It offloaded its 60 per cent of shares in the licences to Telenor of Norway for Rs 6100 crore even before the roll-out," the FIR had said.
According to the FIR, "the estimated loss to the governemnt by grant of licences to these two companies (Swan and Unitech) alone comes to Rs 7,105 crore. The estimated loss for all the 122 circles is more than Rs 22,000 crore."
Swan was alloted UAS licences for 13 circles for Rs 1537 crore and it sold 45 per cent of shares before roll-out to UAE-based Etislat for Rs 4200 crore, the FIR added.