NEW DELHI – Indian police on Saturday charged a former telecom minister with abuse of power and conspiracy in an alleged mobile spectrum fraud that cost the country billions of dollars in lost revenue. The south Indian politician, A Raja, was also accused of cheating, forgery and criminal misconduct on a charge sheet and annexed documents that ran to 80,000 pages. “I am satisfied that there is enough incriminating material on the record to proceed against the accused persons,” judge OP Saini said. Raja, a low-caste politician from a regional party in Premier Manmohan Singh’s national Congress-led coalition, is suspected of rigging rules for the sale of second generation (2G) mobile licences in 2008 to favour some firms. Three executives, employed by a telecom firm belonging to the conglomerate controlled by prominent billionaire Anil Ambani, were also charged.
The charges were the first to be laid in the corruption scandal, said to be potentially the biggest in India’s history, and capped months of investigation. The scene is now set for a high-profile trial that could be a Pandora’s box for the Congress-led coalition, as many of the players who received spectrum are seen as having links to the government, analysts say. The fraud lost the country up to $40 billion in revenues, according to the national auditor, while the federal Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday estimated losses at around $6.7 billion. Raja – who has been arrested and is in jail – is accused of selling spectrum at 2001 prices and changing the application cut-off date to allow certain companies to win licences. He stepped down last November.
Firms named on the charge sheet were Unitech Wireless, partly owned by Norway’s telecommunications giant Telenor, Swan Telecom, since renamed Etisalat DB Telecom, and Reliance Telecom, part of Ambani’s Reliance ADA Group.
