Court summons five corporate honchos in 2G trial

A special CBI court here on Wednesday took cognisance of the third set of charges filed in the 2G case alleging criminal conspiracy and cheating by three more firms and five individuals, including some promoters of the Essar Group. It also asked the five accused to appear before it on Jan. 27 next year. Issuing summons to all the eight accused, the Central Bureau of Investigation Special Judge OP Saini said: “I have carefully gone through the charge sheet and the statement of witnesses and documents related to it. On the basis of material on record, I take cognisance and issue summons to all eight.” The court issued summons to all the five individuals — Essar Group’s Anshuman Ruia, Ravikant Ruia and Vikash Saraf and promoters of Loop Ishwari Prasad Khaitan and Kiran Khaitan. Summons were also issued to three telecom companies — Essar Teleholdings, Loop Telecom and Loop Mobile India. The number of individuals accused in the case has risen to 19, while the companies against which charges have been framed add up to six. The fresh set of charges alleged that Essar Group used Loop as a front company to acquire telecom licences in 2008. Essar, which already had a 33 per cent stake in Vodafone, held substantial equity in Loop and thus violated telecom licence norms, the charge sheet said.The licences to Loop were given during the tenure of former communications minister A. Raja, who is in Tihar Jail under judicial custody, as the prime accused in the case. The firm secured licences for 21 circles for around Rs14.50 billion.“The investigation has established that the said telecom private firm was an ineligible company to get the said licences being an associate company of another telecom group under a corporate veil,” the probe agency said“The fraudulent act was actually a result of the entire conspiracy to cheat the DoT (department of telecommunications) through a fraudulent corporate veil, to hide the actual holding structure of Loop Telecom and Loop Mobile India (erstwhile BPL mobile communication) which was committed through Essar Teleholdings,” the CBI said. The Essar Group, however, denied any wrongdoing. The probe agency filed the first set of charges on April 2.