Leaderboard

Raja on TIME’s List of Top Power Abuses Former Indian telecom minister A. Raja’s alleged lowball pricing of mobile phone spectrum at the behest of his corporate pals is arguably India’s biggest corruption scandal. But should it really be considered among the top all-time abuses of power in the world? TIME magazine has a new list of the “Top 10 Abuses of Power” and it puts Mr. Raja’s so-called 2G scam at No. 2, just behind the “Watergate” scandal that shook American politics and brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974. We at India Real Time think that is a big stretch and is an example of the hyperbole that often surrounds the “2G” spectrum case. The dodgy Indian spectrum sale of 2008 led to several billion dollars in lost potential revenue for the Indian treasury, according to Indian investigators. No one really knows how much the spectrum would have been worth in an auction, and neither investigators nor the media has yet been able to show how much bribe money was paid out to Mr. Raja or his associates. Moreover, it may be a bit early to add Mr. Raja to such a list, given that India’s legal system has yet to render its verdict on him. Mr. Raja, who denies wrongdoing, is facing trial on criminal charges of conspiracy, cheating and forgery. We’re not minimizing the 2G case by any means. Taxpayers should be infuriated if lucrative public airwaves were dealt on the cheap to someone’s cronies. That is indeed a scandal. But if we’re talking about the Global Hall of Infamy here, one would think TIME would include on the list – well ahead of Mr. Raja – the despots and strongmen of Asia, Africa and the Middle East who have verifiably looted their nations and lined their pockets with cash while taking care of their families too. Nowhere on the list, for example, is Indonesia’s former President Suharto, who Transparency International has said misappropriated between $15 billion to $35 billion in state funds during his 32-year rein. This wasn’t lost potential state revenue. These were assets directly controlled by Suharto and his family. (Ironically, it was TIME whose 1999 article helped expose the staggering scale of the Suharto family’s fortune in “cash, property, art, jewelry and jets.” Also not making the cut in TIME’s list: Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Soko, who amassed about $5 billion in wealth over three decades in Zaire (modern-day Congo), according to Transparency. It’s not even clear that Mr. Raja’s funny business with frequencies is the worst-ever abuse of power in India. Some Indians might nominate former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s imposition of emergency rule from 1975 to 1977, when the government halted elections, suspended civil liberties and cracked down on political opposition. It’s hard to tell what TIME’s criteria were for this list. It apparently isn’t limited to government officials, since No. 3 is Dennis Kozlowski and his weirdly opulent lifestyle as CEO of Tyco (when he used corporate funds for such lavish items as a $6,000 shower curtain). There are so many corporate chieftains who have broken trust with shareholders or investors – from the management of Enron to Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme – that it’s hard to know why Mr. Kozlowski was singled out. In the realm of corruption, the Chinese food safety tsar who took bribes to let substandard products into the market is No. 9. There are also several sex scandals on the list, including Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi’s “bunga bunga” parties and his alleged payment for sex to an under-aged Moroccan woman; and the coerced concubines of North Korean despot and “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il. There’s no mention of what is arguably the biggest U.S. sex scandal, former President Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. If this is supposed to be a ranking of abuses of power, sex scandals would seem relatively minor compared to dictators who have committed genocides on their populations or otherwise used the state’s might to attack political opposition. There are numerous such examples. We assume that TIME decided human rights abuses shouldn’t be factored into this particular list. Regardless, it is hard to see how the loss of potential revenue – even a huge amount – from the sale of mobile phone frequencies in India qualifies as the second-worst abuse of power in the world. Not to minimize what Mr. Raja is accused of but sadly there have been much worse abuses of power than that. Via : Wall Street Journal

Anil’s Reliance charged,30000cr lost, says CBI OUR CORRESPONDENT New Delhi, April 2: The CBI today filed charges against A. Raja and eight others as well as three telecom companies, including Reliance Telecom, in connection with the 2G spectrum scam. The CBI has pegged the loss from the scam to the exchequer at30,984.50 crore because of fraudulent allotment of 2G licences. Besides naming the four earlier accused — Raja, his personal assistant R.K. Chandolia, former telecom secretary Siddharth Behura and Shahid Usman Balwa — the CBI has indicted Vinod Goenka, Gautam Doshi, Surendra Pipara, Hari Nayar and Sanjay Chandra. Unitech Wireless and Swan Telecom have also been named in the agency’s first chargesheet along with Reliance Telecom. The comptroller and auditor general had estimated a presumptive loss upto1.76 lakh crore in the issuance of 2G spectrum licences. The revelation of the scam had pushed the UPA government to the wall and paralysed Parliament. Raja, Behura, Chandolia and Balwa had been booked for criminal conspiracy, cheating and forgery under the IPC and under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. The same charges also apply to Goenka, director of Swan Telecom, Chandra, the managing director, Unitech Ltd, Doshi, the group managing director of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (ADA) Group, Surendra Pipara, group president of Reliance ADA, Hari Nair, senior vice-president of Reliance ADA. The chargesheet, running into about 80,000 pages, was carried in seven aluminium trunks before the judge .P. Saini in the special designated court, constituted recently for speedy trial. In January 2008, Raja had granted licences to nine firms — Datacom (now Videcon Telecom), Swan Telecom (now Etisalat DB), Unitech Wireless (now Uninor), Loop Telecom, STel, Allianz, Idea, Aircel and Spice. The agency first registered a case against unknown officials of the department of telecommunication in October 2009. They swung into action only after being rapped by the Supreme Court for delaying the investigation. During the probe several top executives of telecom companies including Reliance Communications, Tata Infrastructure, Essar, Loop Telecom, Spice, Aircel and others were grilled. The agency had also questioned Anil Ambani as his company once held shares in Swan Telecom. Radia mention Corporate lobbyist Niira Radia and attorney-general G.E. Vahanvati are among the 125 prosecution witnesses named in the chargesheet. Vahanvati figures as witness number 32 in the CBI chargesheet while Radia is placed 44th on the list. Tata & Spice ‘hit’ The CBI has claimed that Tata Tele Services and Spice Communication were hit hard by the collusion of Raja and some industrialists in the allocation of 2G spectrum, PTI reports. The chargesheet said Tata Tele Services and Spice Communications, which had priority over Swan Telecom in terms of the dual technology approvals, were “unreasonably deprived” spectrum allocation for the Delhi region. Source: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110403/jsp/nation/story_13803297.jsp

Still Sibal's claim of "NIL" loss actually holds good. CAG's hypothetical figures remain notional till date. Raja's arrest is purely for procedural irregularity of changing 'first come first serve' to 'first pay first serve' thus helping some companies to jump the rest in the queue.

This means Orissa is the luckiest state for having true competitors(Aircel,Reliance & Stel) in the fray. :clap:

Good for us