Attorney general clears decks for Dayanidhi Maran's prosecution in Aircel-Maxis deal

NEW DELHI: Attorney general Mukul Rohatgi on Tuesday cleared the decks for CBI to chargesheet former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran for allegedly forcing Aircel owner C Sivasankaran to sell his firm to Malaysian business tycoon T Ananda Krishnan in return for huge investments into the Maran family owned Sun TV in 2006.

The Supreme Court-monitored CBI investigation into the 2G spectrum scam included the alleged coercion of Sivasankaran to sell his stake to Krishnan. The probe had reached Malaysia and tax havens like Isle of Man and British Virgin Islands.

After completing the investigation, and despite certain documents being denied by Malaysian authorities, CBI had informed the court in its status report that it had sufficient evidence to proceed against Maran. The opinion of the investigating officer was endorsed by a four-tier scrutiny of evidence, culminating with the agency's director of prosecution.

However, CBI director Ranjit Sinha wanted the opinion of then attorney general G E Vahanvati whether the evidence gathered by the agency would stand scrutiny in court. Showing the rule book, Vahanvati returned the file and said the AG's opinion could be sought only when there was a difference of opinion between the director of prosecution and the CBI director.

The CBI director than wrote his opinion on the file saying he felt the "prosecutable" evidence against Maran was weak. This difference of opinion between the CBI director and the director of prosecution necessitated the AG's opinion.

After going through the evidence and the opinions attached with the file, Rohatgi said he saw no reason to disagree with the opinions of the investigating officer and others, up to the director of prosecution, which were expressed after taking into account the evidence collected by the agency.

NGO 'Centre for Public Interest Litigation', through counsel Prashant Bhushan, had filed documents before the 2G scam probe monitoring bench in 2011 alleging that Maran had thwarted Sivasankaran-owned Aircel's repeated pleas for grant of mobile services licences from 2004 to 2006, forcing the owner to sell his stake at a discounted price to Maxis Group owned by Malaysian tycoon T Ananda Krishnan.

It had alleged that Aircel was shown favours shortly after the change in ownership. "In November 2006, DoT issued 14 LoIs to Aircel, and all of them were converted into licences in December 2006. Within three months of this, Maran's family-owned business (Sun TV) received substantial investment from Maxis Group (Aircel) by taking just 20% equity in Sun Direct which did not have much business at that time," the NGO had alleged.

Maxis Group invested Rs 599.01 crore in Sun Direct between December 2007 and December 2009, in addition to another investment of Rs 111 crore in the FM radio operations controlled by the Maran group, it had alleged.

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Attorney general clears decks for Dayanidhi Maran's prosecution in Aircel-Maxis deal