The CBI, probing the 2G spectrum scam, on Tuesday questioned seven top officials of different private telecom companies and confronted them with the documents seized by the agency during its searches. Some of the representatives of the telecom companies were also confronted with former telecom minister A. Raja and Shahid Usman Balwa, promoter of Swan Telecom (now Etisalat-DB Telecom Private Limited). More arrests are likely in a day or two.
Those who were questioned by the CBI officials were Sanjay Chandra (managing director, Unitech), Sandeep Basu (chief executive officer of Loop Telecom), Arun Mandhana (chief financial officer of S. Tel Ltd), Rupendra Sikka (chief regulatory officer of S. Tel), Kishore Salatore and Sanjay Ubale (both from Tata Realty) and Vinod Goenka of Etisalat-DB Telecom Private Limited.
According to sources, agency officials recorded the statement of Mr Sanjay Chandra. His questioning continued for around four hours at the agency headquarters. He was confronted with the documents seized by the agency during its raids at Unitech’s office in Tamil Nadu on October 23, 2009, sources said. Mr Chandra was confronted with more than 5,000 pages of documents. Unitech is the only company after Swan Telecom, which has been named by the CBI in the FIR filed on October 21, 2009.
The charges against Unitech, according to the CBI’s FIR, was that it off-loaded 60 per cent of its shares to Telenor, a Norway-based telecom company, and earned a profit of 267 per cent even before service roll-out. “M/S Unitech was allotted UAS licences for 22 circles for `1,658 crores. It offloaded its 60 per cent of shares in the licences to Telenor of Norway for `6,100 crores even before roll-out,” the FIR said.
“The agency officials also recorded his statement. He may be called for another round of questioning by the agency. He was also asked specific questions about his equations with Sadiq Bacha, a close aide of Mr Raja and owner of Chennai-based Green House Promoters,” sources said.
The CEO of Loop Telecom Sandeep Basu was confronted with around 10,000 pages documents seized by the agency and asked specific questions related to the allotment of spectrum licences, sources said. Loop had got licenses for 12 service areas when the spectrum was issued during the first stint of Mr Raja as telecom minister between September 2007 and January 2008.
“The agency officials also questioned chief financial officer, Arun Mandhana, and chief regulatory officer, Rupendra Sikka, of S. Tel, a company which was issued licences for certain service areas during the same period”, sources added.
Tata Realty managing director Sanjay Ubale and Kishore Salatore were quizzed by the CBI about the funding pattern in Tata Tele services.