Top RIL officials appear before CBI court

Top officials of Reliance Industries, including Manoj Modi and Shankar Adawal, today appeared before a special CBI Court here in connection with a case relating to alleged masking of international calls as local by erstwhile Reliance Infocomm.

The court later adjourned the case to September 8. The case, in which Reliance Infocomm and its then top officials were alleged to have caused revenue losses to the exchequer by masking of calls, relates to a time when the company was part of unified Reliance Industries group led by Mukesh Ambani.

Reliance Infocomm was rechristened as Reliance Communications after it was transferred from Mukesh to younger brother Anil Ambani as part of family settlement in 2005.

Modi, a top lieutenant of RIL chief Mukesh Ambani, and five officials of erstwhile Reliance Infocomm, were summoned by the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate to appear before the court on August 3.
    
"CBI has filed the case against Reliance Infocomm ... The cases were adjourned to September 8," Senior Advocate B Kumar representing Reliance Infocomm told reporters.
    
To a query whether all those summoned, including Manoj Modi who was a Director of Reliance Infocomm and Akhil Gupta, the then CEO (Business Development) were present, he said, "They did appear".
    
Shankar Adaval, President (Corporate Affairs), Pankaj Pawar, Head of Regulatory, and two other officials K R Raja and B D Khurana were also present for the hearing, he said.
    
"There is no loss cost and every cost has been repaid," he said on whether there was any loss to the exchequer.
    
In its FIR registered in August 2006, CBI had named Reliance Infocomm, represented by then board of directors, Modi, Gupta, Adaval, Panwar and unknown others.
   
The chargesheet said the accused persons intentionally tampered with the working of the telegraph network of the company and presented calls directly in the local network with a dishonest intention of defrauding the central government.
    
It may be recalled that Reliance Infocomm had under protest paid a fine of Rs 150 crore imposed by telecom tribunal TDSAT in 2005 in this connection.
    
According to CBI, the company had masked incoming international calls as local ones through one of the three gateways- Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai. The calls were put on the Public System Telephone Network as local.
    
According to the chargesheet, the company transmitted over 7.52 crore minutes of international long distance calls with manipulated CLI during May 2004 to September 2004, evading Access Deficit Charges to the tune of Rs 32 crore.