Reliance Telecom told the 2G case trial court on Wednesday that the law ministry’s opinion on the term ‘associate’ has cleared it of CBI charges.
The 2004-founded company’s counsel S Ganesh said Reliance Telecom, along with its associates, had in October 2007 handed over the control of Swan Telecom to Mumbai-based entrepreneur Shahid Usman Balwa. The premier probe agency had later alleged that Reliance Telecom was controlling Swan Telecom.
On Wednesday, the Reliance Telecom counsel denied charges of violation because the Mumbai-based company was not holding any stake in Swan at the time of allocation of spectrum licence on January 10, 2008. “The opinion of the Ministry says the date on which a company applied for the licence is irrelevant and the only thing which matters is the date when actual licence was granted,” Ganesh told the court.
The law ministry’s opinion on the definition of associate says that in the telecom sector, several companies may get into associations for activities like tower sharing, but it does not make any of the company an associate. Whether a firm is an associate will be decided only on the basis of shareholding, it pointed out. “The report of the ministry of law and justice,” Ganesh noted, “says an existing licensee telecom firm should have more than 10 per cent stakes in another firm at the time of grant of UASL (unified access services licenses) to the latter for being termed as associate.”
Swan Telecom’s counsel Amit Desai toed a similar line and said CBI should have taken Department of Telecommunication’s advice on the definition on associate instead of going to ministry of corporate affairs. “CBI has not done its work properly. Corporate affairs ministry, in its report, had suggested that CBI should do further probe the matter (associate definition),” he said.
Desai also said as an investigative agency, CBI’s job was to present the facts — and not determine laws. “CBI cannot pick and choose the legal opinion. Its version of the law is not binding.”