Aircel-Maxis deal row: SC adjourns hearing till next week

The apex court adjourned the hearing on the matter of CBI Director Ranjit Sinha's visitor's Diary till Thursday next week

The Supreme Court on Friday adjourned the hearing on Aircel-Maxis deal case to next Thursday and asked the CBI lawyer KK Venugopal to take notice and answer on the same day.

BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, who is a petitioner in the case, said that Maxis Company owns 100 percent of the Aircel company, which is illegal according to Indian law.

He also said that the sale was cleared by FIPB and approved by P Chidambaram, thereby qualifying as an illegality by him and therefore an investigation is required.

"I have filed an interlocutory application in the Supreme Court where I said that the CBI is so far concentrating on the 'dadagiri' of Maran in making Sivasankar, the owner of Aircel, sell the company to Maxis of Malaysia. But the bigger crime I said was the sale was cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) and approved by Mr Chidambaram, whose son Mr Kartik Chidambaram had a company which had allegedly given loan according to the statement of accounts of Aircel, to the Aircel company," Swamy told media persons here.

"My demand was that Chidambaram and his son should be investigated; and in the chargesheet against Maran, there is a mention of the fact that the CBI plans to go into this question of whether the FIPB could have given clearance because actually the law says that no foreign company can own more than 74 percent of the equity of an Indian company, but here de-facto the foreign company Maxis owns 100 percent of Maxis, which is illegal. How did Mr Chidambaram clear it?" he added.

The Supreme Court on Friday adjourned the hearing on the matter of CBI Director Ranjit Sinha's visitor's Diary till Thursday next week.