Document Fragment View

Matching Fragments

9. It is alleged that on 23rd November, 2007, the Licensing Finance Branch of DOT objected to change made in LOI by accused A.Raja and suggested that it appears logical to keep the date of applications as date of priority for issue of licence provided the applicant is able to establish that he is eligible on the date of application and is also eligible when the LOI is issued. This note was endorsed by Member(Finance), Telecom Commission and Secretary(Telecom) also suggesting the revision of entry fee for new licences in line with revision of fee for dual technology spectrum as suggested by Ministry of Finance in its letter. Accused A.Raja, however, ignored the advice to keep the date of application as date of priority for issue of licence or to review and enhance the licence fee and this resulted in a loss to the tune of almost of 30000 crores to the State exchequer.

12. The first charge sheet reveals that Reliance ADA Group of Companies was interested in obtaining UAS Licences for 13 circles which they were not eligible for in view of Clause 8 of UASL policy guidelines. In order to circumvent the aforesaid ineligibility clause and to cheat the Department, accused Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara in furtherance of the conspiracy created and structured a new company M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd which applied for UASL Licence on 2nd March, 2007. The above referred accused persons has structured M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. in such a manner that its equity holding was shown as 90.1% with M/s Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd. and 9.9% with M/s Reliance Telecom Ltd. The investigation into holding structures of M/s Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd. revealed that aforesaid company was actually funded by the Group Companies of M/s Reliance ADA Group. It was revealed that `3 crores utilized by M/s Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd. in January 2007 and `95.51 crores used by said company in March, 2007 to subscribe to majority equity shares of M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. was arranged through Group Companies of Reliance ADA Group. Besides that, a sum of `992 crores which constituted the bulk of networth of M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. was also provided by Reliance Telecom Ltd. under the garb of subscribing to preferential shares to M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. Those preferential shares were purchased by Reliance Telecom Ltd. at abnormally high premium of `999/- per share of face value `1/- although M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. had no business history at that time. Aforesaid amount was immediately returned by M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd to M/s Reliance Communications Ltd. on the pretext of advance against a purchase order. These transactions were carried out on the instruction of Gautam Doshi and Hari Nair.

13. Charge sheet also disclose that in order to achieve the end of conspiracy, above three accused persons created two other companies M/s Zebra Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Parrot Consultants Pvt. Ltd. The equity holding of aforesaid two companies and M/s Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd. was structured by Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara insuch a manner that those companies were cross- holding each other in interlocking structure during the period w.e.f. March, 2006 to 4th April, 2007. This interlocking was done in such a manner that 50% equity shares of M/s Zebra Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd. and M/s Parrot Consultants Pvt. were purchased by M/s Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd., 50% equity shares of Parrot Consultants Pvt. Ltd. and Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd. were purchased by M/s Zebra Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd. and 50% equity shares of Zebra Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd. and Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd. was purchased by M/s Parrot Consultants Pvt. Ltd. This arrangement ensured that neither of those three companies was absolute owner of any company and this practically left the control of all the three companies in the hands of the Directors i.e. the petitioners. In order to achieve the end of conspiracy, Hari Nair in league with Gautam Doshi and Surendra Pipara falsified the records of Board Meetings of Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. and Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd to show that M/s. Tiger Traders Pvt. Ltd. was held by India Telecom Infrastructures Fund of Ashok Wadhwa Group and also to show the appointment of Ashok Wadhwa as Director of those companies and his presence during the meetings.

14. Before the LOI could be granted, M/s Reliance Communications Ltd., a group of Reliance ADA Group got GSM spectrum in those 13 circles pursuant to its applications under dual technology policy. Thus, the application dated 2nd March, 2007 moved through M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd was of no use to Reliance ADA Group. Accordingly, Reliance ADA Group withdrew its holding from M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. and the accused Gautam Doshi, Hari Nair and Surendra Pipara transferred the control of M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. to the co-accused Shahid Balwa and Vinod Goenka in order to facilitate them to cheat DOT by getting UAS Licence in the name of M/s Swan Telecom Pvt. Ltd. which company till 18th October, 2007 was ineligible for UAS Licence in view of Clause 8 of policy guideline.