New Delhi, Jun 12: The CBI has begun a probe into alleged violations related to Foreign Direct Investment cap by a company—Data Access India Limited—after it was issued a license for International Long Distance (ILD) telephony service in 2002.
Though the government withdrew the license in 2005 due to non-compliance of terms and conditions, the matter was pending before the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) which referred the case to CBI in March this year, official sources said.
Recently the CBI handed over a list of documents to the Department of Telecom pertaining to the case prompting it to call a special meeting to dig out the files from various departments, the sources said.
The CBI has also sought the details of Telecom Ministers holding charge between February 4, 2002 to July 14, 2005 along with their respective tenures who dealt with the file pertaining to Data Access India Limited, the sources said.
Later BJP leader Pramod Mahajan held the post till 2003 after which Arun Shourie took over till May 2004.
Finally Dyanidhi Maran held the post under UPA-I. Besides the ministers, the CBI has also sought the list of officials who had dealt with the file of now defunct Data Access.
The CBI claimed that as per the guidelines for issuance of license for ILD services in India, the applicant must be an Indian company and its total foreign equity should not have exceeded prescribed cap of FDI at any time during the license period.
The CBI alleged that the stake of Pacific Convergence (Mauritius) limited was more than the 49 per cent and Data Access had violated the FDI norms.
