Corruption charges framed against Bharti Airtel
Indian police Friday filed corruption charges against Bharti Airtel, India's biggest telecom firm.
NEW DELHI - Indian police on Friday filed corruption charges against Bharti Airtel, India s biggest telecom firm, and Vodafone s Indian arm as part of a sprawling probe into allocation of mobile airwaves.
The accusations against Bharti Airtel, headed by billionaire tycoon Sunil Bharti Mittal, and Vodafone stem from the awarding of bandwidth under the previous Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government in 2002.
They follow separate allegations of rigging of the sale of spectrum in 2008 that have rocked the current Congress-led government and led to charges against former telecom minister A. Raja and 16 other people.
Bharti and the Indian unit of British mobile giant Vodafone face charges of criminal conspiracy over the 2002 awarding of second-generation (2G) spectrum, according to court documents filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
There was no immediate comment from Bharti, India s leading mobile operator by subscribers or Vodafone, another top mobile company in the country, but in the past they have denied any wrongdoing.
The alleged offences involving Vodafone s India unit took place when it was a joint venture between Hong Kong s Hutchison Whampoa and India s Essar Group.
The charges allege that former Indian telecom secretary Shyamal Ghosh conspired to cause the government a loss of 8.46 billion rupees ($150 million) and provide an "undue gain" to the telecom firms.
The charges allege Ghosh colluded with former BJP telecom minister Pramod Mahajan, a party wheeler-dealer shot dead by his brother in 2006, to carry out the offences.
The new charges relate to a request by India s Supreme Court to the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the awarding of mobile airwaves between 2001 and 2007 after investigating the granting of spectrum in subsequent years.
The BJP, which was in office until 2004, has accused the government of seeking to blacken the opposition party s name.
The much-larger 2008 2G spectrum sale by the Congress government at far below market rates to selected firms could have cost the treasury billions of dollars in lost revenue, the public auditor has alleged.
Former telecom minister Raja has insisted he was only following the previous BJP government s policy in awarding mobile spectrum.
