Tata ‘bribed’ Raja, says Balwa

Swan Telecom’s former managing director and 2G scam accused Shahid Balwa on Tuesday dragged the Tata group into the case as a tactic to shore up his defences before special CBI judge OP Saini.

Balwa accused the CBI for shielding the Tatas and fished out a letter written by Tata Group chairman Ratan Tata to former telecom minister A Raja. Balwa alleged this was concrete evidence of a “bribe”. Tata’s letter dated September 15, 2009, and addressed to Raja, talks about a “Rs20 crore donation” to a hospital in the minister’s constituency, Balwa said.

He also turned his guns against the Videocon group accusing the CBI for not probing their role and alleged that they had got their licence through “forgery”.

Balwa’s lawyer Majid Memon read out Tata’s letter that stated “We have never made a grant of this size in the trust’s history, it is a special case made after considerable deliberation.”

However in an official statement from the Tata group, they denied Balwa’s allegations.

Balwa further alleged the CBI had purposefully covered up dubious behaviour by rival applicants Datacom and Tata Teleservices.

The 2G accused also claimed CBI had no evidence for alleging that Swan or Unitech had received prior knowledge of application deadlines or warning of dates on which bank guarantees and demand drafts would be needed.

He pointed out that all 13 companies that were issued letters of intent had their financial documents in order on the same day.

On the subject of queue jumping, Memon asked how Datacom had jumped so quickly up the order of seniority to file its application only a few minutes after Swan.

“The CBI is trying to blame Swan for everything, but nobody speaks about Datacom though there are allegations by your own witnesses saying someone was trying to break into the queue,” he said.

Balwa said he had no role in the allotment of 2G spectrum to his firm. It was the department of telecom which took all the decisions regarding the grant of licences.

Balwa told the court that it was in March 2007 that Raja got a report from the Wireless Planning and Coordination wing saying no spectrum was available in Delhi circle.

“In November 2007, however, all of a sudden 15 MHz spectrum appeared in the Delhi circle and nobody knew how it appeared,” he said, adding that as per the DoT website, even today 12 MHz spectrum is available in the Delhi circle.

Balwa also pointed out fingers towards Videocon chairman Venugopal Dhoot and alleged that he got the licence through forgery.

Videocon was among the nine new companies that got 2G licences in 2008.

“Dhoot flashed the ID card of Rajkumar Dhoot who is his brother and member of parliament and also member of some telecom committee in parliament. Because of this he was given preference and entered the DoT first and hence got the licence,” Memon said.