The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has said that Swan Telecom and Unitech had together caused a loss of over Rs 70 billion to the government exchequer, as both had offloaded their shares for substantial sums after obtaining 2G spectrum, according to news reports.
Following the arrest of Shahid Usman Balwa, promoter of Swan, the CBI is now focusing on Unitech?s officials who had been instrumental in getting the unified access licenses (UAS) in September 2007 and January 2008.
In a five-page FIR, the CBI has said that Unitech was alloted UAS licenses for 22 cricles for Rs 16.58 billion and had offloaded 60 per cent of its shares in the licenses to Telenor of Norway for Rs 61 billion. Similarly, Swan was alloted UAS licenses for 13 circles for Rs 15.37 billion and it sold 45 per cent of shares to UAE-based Etislat for Rs 42 billion.
It added that the licenses were issued at a very nominal rate based on prices fixed in the year 2001. Also, it said that as per the information received, all this was done in criminal conspiracy between DoT offcials and private companies in order to award licenses to the company by putting a cap on the number of applicants against the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and by awarding licenses to private companies on first-come-first-serve basis on the rates of 2001 without competitive bidding.
