Unitech, Swan caused Rs 7,105-cr loss in 2G scam: CBI

Swan Telecom and Unitech Telecom companies had together caused a loss of over Rs 7,000 crore to government exchequer as both had offloaded their shares for hefty sums after getting the 2G spectrum, alleges CBI.

With the arrest of Shahid Usman Balwa, promoter of Swan, the focus of CBI is now on officials of Unitech who had been instrumental in getting the Unified Access Licences (UAS) during September 2007 and January 2008.

In a five-page FIR, CBI said the officials of the Department of Telecom and some private companies entered into a criminal conspiracy and caused wrongful gains to themseleves.

It said M/s Unitech was alloted UAS licences for 22 cricles for Rs 1658 crore. "It offloaded its 60% of shares in the licenses to Telenor of Norway for Rs 6,100 crores even before the roll-out," the FIR said.

Similarly, Swan was alloted UAS licences for 13 circles for Rs 1,537 crore and it sold 45% of shares before roll-out to UAE-based Etislat for Rs 4,200 crore.

"The estimated loss to the governemnt by grant of licences to these two companies alone comes to Rs 7,105 crore. On pro-rata basis, the estimated loss for all the 122 circles is more than Rs 22,000 crore," the FIR said.

It said the licenses were issued at a very nominal rate based on prices fixed in the year 2001.

"As per the information received, all this was done in criminal conspiracy between DoT offcials and private companies in order to award licences to the company for a heavy consideration by putting a cap on the number of applicants against recommendation of TRAI and by awarding licences to private companies on first-come-first-serve basis on the rates of 2001 without competitive bidding," the FIR said.