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29 March 2024

India police raid Bharti, Vodafone in telecom probe

Published
By AFP

Indian police on Saturday raided the offices of two of the nation's biggest telecom firms, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, in a widening probe into alleged wrongdoing in the awarding of mobile spectrum.

India's top federal police force, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), searched offices of Bharti Airtel in New Delhi and the Indian unit of Vodafone, part of Britain's Vodafone Group Plc, in Mumbai, a CBI spokeswoman told AFP.

The searches involved alleged irregularities in the distribution of mobile airwaves between 2001 and 2003 when the previous Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party was in power, the spokeswoman said.

"The searches were in connection with allegations that have been framed," she said.

The raids were part of a sprawling police probe into the awarding of spectrum that has engulfed the current Congress-led government and threatens to taint the previous BJP government which was in office until 2004.

Responding to the raids, Bharti Airtel, India's leading mobile provider by subscribers, said it had always maintained the "highest standard of corporate governance and regulatory compliance."

"We would like to categorically state all the spectrum allotted to us from time to time has been strictly as per the stated government policy," a Bharti Airtel spokesman said.

"We are providing all details and correspondence to the authorities," the spokesman said.

Vodafone, another top mobile firm, said it had acted in compliance with rules. Britain's Vodafone bought a 67-percent stake in Hong Kong-based Hutchison Whampoa's Indian mobile unit in 2007, renaming it Vodafone Essar.

The CBI alleged in its preliminary enquiry report that the telecoms department had increased the spectrum base under late telecoms minister Prahmod Mahajan beyond the prescribed limit.

The CBI also searched the homes of two former top telecom bureaucrats.

Mahajan, a prominent BJP politician who was murdered by his brother in 2006 during a family argument, served as telecoms minister from 2001 to 2003.

The raids come as a former Congress telecoms minister is on trial with 13 other top telecom, government and other officials over an alleged multi-billion-dollar corruption scandal involving the allocation of mobile spectrum in 2008.

A. Raja, who was telecoms minister from 2007 to 2010, is the central figure in a case that has rocked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's administration and helped make corruption one of the country's hottest political issues.