In what could turn out to be a big scam for the telecom industry, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday unearthed a well-laid conspiracy to dupe the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd (MTNL), Mumbai, of crores of rupees. The agency’s anti-corruption bureau has booked two senior MTNL officials and nine distributors in connection with the scam which, according to initial estimates, is to the tune of Rs7 crore.
According to CBI officials, the senior officers — BB Chaudhary, deputy general manager, GSM service, and V Gurumurthy, assistant general manager, sales — and the MTNL distributors issued three lakh mobile phone connections between June 2008 and February 2009. Most of these connections were based on fake or forged documents.
The motive, the officials said, was to “reap the benefits” of a scheme MTNL had launched during that period. “The MTNL had floated a scheme named SIM-75 in which SIM cards of Rs75 were provided to MTNL distributors on an upfront commission of Rs50 per card,” said a senior CBI official. Under this scheme, the distributors were entitled to a commission of Rs150 for each activated connection up to 600 connections, Rs200 for 600-2,000 connections and Rs250 for 2,000-and-above connections.
The only clause in the scheme was that this would be applicable to a minimum 100 activations per distributor and recharge of Rs100 on the activated connections.
“However, the accused misused this scheme and issued fake connections. Proper verification of documents, which is a pre-requisite while issuing the connection, was also flouted,” said a CBI official.
“The MTNL officials did not ensure that the distributors adhered to the prescribed conditions to avail the incentives,” he added. With their knowledge, the distributors activated thousands of fake connections based on forged and fictitious customer application forms and claimed huge amounts of commission against the connections.
“A lot more misuse is likely to come to the fore. We are digging out the roles played by other MTNL officials too,” said the CBI official. The sleuths conducted searches at the offices and residential premises of the MTNL duo and the distributors’ offices.
“We have seized several incriminating documents and computer hard disks used to activate the fake connections. We have sent them for analysis and are scrutinising the modus operandi used by the group,” said a CBI official.
