Has 2G trail to Anil Ambani gone cold, or has CBI tripped?

Anil Ambani is alleged to be directly or indirectly linked to the 2G scam. His top three men, now in jail, have stated in their ‘bail’ pleas that they were merely the employees of Reliance- ADAG and not beneficiaries.

By implication, they are saying they weren’t the prime actors in the scam, as portrayed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Are they then trying to implicate their boss?

The CBI, for its part, is sticking to its guns and not implicating Ambani.This debate is becoming intense, with the agency filing a written, point-by-point reply to senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan’s 2G spectrum case affidavit. Bhushan has demanded that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) be formed to monitor the CBI’s investigations into the 2G scam, as the agency seems to be staying clear of the big fish.

A couple of media reports peremptorily closed the issue by stating that the CBI had given a ‘clean chit to Anil Ambani’. Did it?

Firstpost went through the CBI reply and found it wasn’t that simple to interpret. Plus, the issue is not yet closed, and the Prashant Bhushan team says they are studying the CBI reply and will file a counter-affidavit in the Supreme Court. Clearly, even the CBI has not shut the case of Anil Ambani!

The CBI, in its reply to Bhushan, appears to be almost pleading: How we can arrest the master, Anil Ambani, when his deputies, Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara and Hari Nair, are hell bent on becoming his sacrificial lambs.

Gautam Doshi, Group Managing Director of Reliance-ADAG, says he took all the decisions regarding structuring the shareholding of Swan Telecom Ltd, its funding and investment from Reliance Telecom Ltd. He says Srendra Pipara and Hari Nair were at his command and they executed his decisions.

Prashant Bhushan’s assertion

But Bhushan argues it is inconceivable that three employees could have created a convoluted maze of companies to disguise Swan’s real ownership and taken Rs 1,000 crore of company money without the approval of the chairman of the board (Anil Ambani).The CBI contends that Bhushan doesn’t understand the criminal culpability of individual action in this case. When Swan applied for the unified access service licence (UASL) in 2007, it had Tigers Traders Pvt Ltd (91.1 percent) and Reliance Telecom (9.9 percent) as its shareholders.

Two more companies - Zebra Consultants Pvt Ltd and Parrot Consultants Pvt Ltd - had shares in Tigers Traders and all three companies had shareholding patterns that were inter-locked. Tigers Traders’ investment had come from AAA Consultancy Services Pvt Ltd and Anil Ambani and his wife Tina Ambani were the original promoters of AAA Consultancy Services.

The CBI justification

How can we arrest Anil Ambani, when he and his wife had already moved out of the board of AAA Consultancy and transferred all its shares to Tiger, Zebra and Parrot in 2006, a year before Swan applied for the UAS licence? How could we arrest Anil Ambani when Pipara and Nair say or admit that it was Gautam Doshi who had communicated decisions regarding investment/disinvestment by Reliance Telecom in the equity and preference shares of Swan Telecom?

They took Doshi’s instructions to use a dormant company of Reliance ADAG to apply for a UAS licence, the CBI argues, adding there is not a shred of paper which has the stamp or signature of Anil Ambani or his wife Tina Ambani in these deals! How then, can the CBI charge-sheet Anil Ambani?

The CBI can establish Anil Ambani’s culpability only if it is able to prove that Reliance Telecom sold off its 9.9 percent shares of Swan Telecom to former telecom minister A Raja, now in jail, as quid pro quo for Raja approving GSM spectrum for Reliance for 20 circles at 2001 prices even before the dual-tech policy was made public on 19 October 2007.

Raja had approved dual spectrum for Reliance on 18 October 2007. And exactly two months later, on 18 December 2007, Reliance sold off its 9.9 percent stakes in Swan at a throwaway price of Rs 15 a share, whereas UAE-based Etisalat bought the same Swan share for Rs 285 a share.

The CBI can probably claim that Reliance undervalued its shares and sold off its entire stake worth $76 million in Swan (based on the price Etisalat paid) for a paltry $4 million. The question is who did this stake sale really go to?

But how would you prove it? The money trail took the CBI to Mauritius, where Reliance had transferred its Swan shares to Delphi Investments for $4 million. The CBI discovered that another Mauritius company, Mavi, owned Delphi 100 percent and further that Mavi is a 100 percent subsidiary of a Swiss company, BTS Belvior Investments.

The CBI has sent a Letter Rogatory to the concerned authorities in Switzerland to investigate the directors of BTS Belvior Investments. The CBI suspects that this investigation will unveil a Raja link somewhere.

Alternatively, it is also possible that BTS Belvior is further owned by yet another company based in some other country, like Singapore or some British Island. There are layers within layers. It may take months or even years for the CBI to get to the bottom of the truth. Till then Anil Ambani is untouchable.

The Prashant Bhushan team of lawyers, who are studying the CBI reply, are preparing a counter-affidavit. They feel that the CBI has set a new low in corporate accountability by ignoring the Anil Ambani angle. There is material evidence only if the CBI wants to see it. “Why doesn’t the CBI trail the Rs 4,000 crore that Swan earned by selling a 40 percent stake to Etisalat? Where did this entire ‘profit’ money go - DB Realty or Reliance Telecom?”