New Delhi:
A Raja continued to whip up a storm today, claiming, "I did not seek to implicate the Prime Minister and the then Finance Minister in the 2G case." He also blamed the media for "putting words in my mouth."
Mr Raja has begun defending himself in court - he is accused of engineering India's largest scam by giving away telecom licenses for low prices to companies he favoured. Mr Raja was Telecom Minister till November when he resigned over charges of corruption and the 2G scam. He was arrested in February and has been in Tihar Jail since.
Yesterday in court, Mr Raja named the Prime Minister and P Chidambaram, who was Finance Minister in 2008 when Mr Raja allocated licenses to nine companies. He chose not to auction spectrum, opting instead to follow a first-come-first-serve policy. Mr Raja said that the PM and Mr Chidambaram were aware that two companies who got licenses from him - Swan and Unitech Wireless - then sold equity at huge profits to foreign partners. Both Swan and Unitech have been accused of cheating and conspiracy, and their top executives are in jail with Mr Raja.
Minutes after declaring that he did not want to implicate Mr Chidambaram, Mr Raja seemed to do just that. "The then Finance Minister, an eminent lawyer himself, cleared the sale of equity by the two licensees. He's bound to come as a witness at some point," he said.
Unitech Wireless and Swan Telecom bought licenses for Rs. 1600 crore each in 2008. Experts say that on the strength of their licenses, they were able to land huge amounts of additional equity from foreign investors. Analysts say this proves that Mr Raja grossly under-valued the licenses that he sold during his term in office.
Mr Chidambaram said yesterday that he had asked Mr Raja to clarify whether Unitech and Swan sold equity not by divestment (selling a part of their own stake) but by issuing fresh shares for their foreign investors. Mr Raja had claimed yesterday that Mr Chidambaram "had said in front of the PM that dilution of shares does not amount to sale of 2G licenses as per the corporate law." Then he dared, "Let the PM deny this."
Today, he repeated that while Swan and Unitech are being targeted for selling equity, Ratan Tata did the same but has not been faulted by investigators. Mr Raja contends that Tata Teleservices sold 27% equity to foreign partner DoCoMo for 14,000 crores. This, he said, is more than half of what the CBI has described as the entire cost of the alleged 2G scam.
Mr Tata has not commented on Mr Raja's statement today, but in December, he had said that NTT DoCoMo's investment was based on Tata Teleservices' performance and the potential growth of the company; and that Tata Teleservices has not been advantaged in any way by Mr Raja or any earlier minister.
Kapil Sibal, who took over as Telecom Minister from Mr Raja, said yesterday that Swan and Unitech Wireless are not under investigation for the deals they struck with foreign companies Telenor and Etisalat respectively. He said they were entitled to divest their equity for profit. The charges against both companies, he said, is of "favouritism." The CBI, which is investigating the scam, has accused the two firms of getting licenses out of turn in the first-come-first serve policy for awarding licenses. Investigators say Mr Raja bent the rules to help these companies jump to the head of the queue.
Mr Raja also said today that his judicial custody amounts to illegal detention. His lawyer said that he should be released immediately.
RAJA SLAMS CAG REPORT AS "WORTHLESS DOCUMENT"Mr Raja also launched a fierce attack on the report prepared by the government's auditor that declared Mr Raja's faulty policies had cost the government 1.76 lakh crores. The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) was delivered in November, and forced Mr Raja to resign as Telecom Minister.
Mr Raja said the report is "worthless" and that the Comptroller and Auditor General is "a legal illiterate" and "just an accountant". Mr Raja argued that the CAG had based its calculations on the fact that spectrum was not auctioned. There was no obligation for him to do so, he said.