NEW DELHI: Five senior Indian corporate executives accused in an alleged mobile phone licence sales fraud which may have cost the country up to $40 billion in lost revenue were arrested on Wednesday.
The men were taken into custody after a special court rejected their bail pleas, citing the "magnitude" of the corruption scandal -- potentially the biggest in independent India's history.
The five executives had been charged earlier this month with cheating, forgery and abetment to crime.
"The allegations in the chargesheet make it out to be a case of the highest magnitude and gravity, and there is enough incriminating material on record against the accused," Judge O.P. Saini told the court.
The executives joined six other men already in New Delhi's Tihar Jail over the scandal, including ex-telecom minister A. Raja, government officials and businessmen.
Raja, a low-caste politician from a regional party in Premier Manmohan Singh's national Congress-led coalition, quit late last year over charges that mobile licences were sold in 2008 at cut-rate prices in exchange for kickbacks.
He faces charges including abuse of power, conspiracy and forgery and is suspected of rigging rules for the sale of second-generation (2G) mobile licences to favour some firms.
The businessmen arrested on Wednesday included Gautam Doshi, managing director of Reliance Telecom, part of tycoon Anil Ambani's Reliance ADA Group, and two others working for the telecom unit.
Also jailed was Sanjay Chandra, a top executive of Unitech Wireless, partly owned by Norwegian telecommunications giant Telenor.
All accused in the case have denied any wrongdoing.
Prosecutor U.U. Lalit opposed bail for the five men, saying they might seek to influence witnesses to be called at the high-profile trial.
Raja's trial could prove a headache for the government, which is already reeling from a slew of corruption scandals, as many of the players who received licences are seen as having links to the coalition.
The special court was created to speed up the telecom case, in which prosecutors plan to call 125 witnesses including senior government officials and a host of top telecom executives.
The 2G fraud lost the country up to $40 billion in revenues, according to the national auditor, while the federal Central Bureau of Investigation estimated losses at around $6.7 billion.
Comments
Comments are closed for this article.