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Special CBI court today sent notices to all 2G spectrum scam accused to respond to CBI’s plea to summon Anil Ambani and Tina Ambani among 17 witnesses in the ongoing trial. The defence counsels are expected to reply to CBI’s plea on July 3.
In its application CBI has sought to call Anil Ambani as the chairman of Reliance Group in the witness box to depose “as to who was responsible for incorporation of shell companies including Swan Telecom, Tiger Traders, Zebra Consultants, Parrot Consultants and Giraffe Consultancy and their interlocking equity structures.” CBI also expects Ambani to throw some light on the corporate structuring of Swan Telecom, the investment and divestments into and out of the company and its decision to apply for the unified access service licence.
CBI director, Ranjit Sinha told Business Standard that Ambani is not a suspect in the 2G spectrum case. “I cannot comment on why their names were not included in the list earlier. The list has been submitted by our prosecutor U U Lalit who is a Supreme Court appointee. It will be good for our case,” he said.
The investigation agency also wants the court to summon Tina Ambani in her capacity as the director and chairperson of ADAE Ventures and AAA Consultancy which did multiple transactions with Tiger Traders. She was also authorized to transact on behalf of Tiger Traders and Swan Telecom without any limit on the value. Her testimony, CBI feels is required to depose the person responsible for the transfer of Swan Telecom to DB Group in October 2007.
“The reason to exclude the top honchos is baffling. The onus will lie on CBI to justify them as witnesses. It is not common to bring up new witnesses after trial has progressed so much,” said Aman Lekhi, senior advocate.
The inclusion of the new set of witnesses is related to the case against Reliance Telecom, where CBI has alleged the Swan was controlled completely by Reliance and therefore was not eligible to get the spectrum licence. The accused likely to be impacted include Reliance officials, Hari Nair, Surendra Pipara and Gautam Doshi and also DB group’s Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka.
“We will oppose CBI’s plea tooth and nail. They are trying to derail the trial by calling witnesses two years of trial,” said Vijay Agarwal, senior lawyer representing Balwa and R K Chandolia, A Raja’s personal secretary.
Among other witnesses listed by CBI are Reliance Energy’s Anita Gokhale and Kamalkant Gupta, Anant Raj Group’s President, Yogesh Sharma, Raj Pal, the then advisor, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and various representatives of HDFC Bank, State Bank of India and ICICI Bank.
So far the special CBI court has recorded the statements of over 125 of the listed 165 witnesses including attorney general Goolam Vahanvati, D Subbarao, Governor, Reserve Bank of India, D S Mathur, former telecom secretary and R Gopalan, secretary, economic affairs, finance ministry.
| Reason why CBI wants to summon the Ambanis |
| To depose against the person responsible for incorporation of shell companies including Swan Telecom |
| To depose as to who was pursuing the applications with DoT |
| And the person/s responsible for the transfer of Swan Telecom to the DB Group in Oct 2007 |
