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Sun TV Maran + BSNL Private exchange scam

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Jun 07 2014 : The Times of India (Chennai)

Maran `illegal exchange' case: CBI summons ex-Kalaignar TV MD

Arun Ram

Chennai

TNN

The CBI has summoned former Kalaignar TV managing director Sharad Kumar, a former senior executive of Sun Network, for questioning in connection with the case of `illegal exchange' at former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran's Boat Club residence in 2007.

The agency found that by drawing 323 high-speed BSNL lines to Maran's house, and laying another set of underground optic fibre cables to his brother Kalanithi Maran's Sun Network office to uplink programmes, BSNL incurred a loss of `440 crore. Sources said a four-member CBI team from Delhi was now in Chennai, trying for statements from people once close to the Maran brothers to make the case watertight.

The summons to Kumar, who headed Sun's Udaya and Gemini channels before falling out with the Marans, come immediately after the interrogation of another senior Sun executive, F Hansraj Saxe na, who had a similarly bitter exit from the group. Kumar and Saxena were Kalanithi's college mates who later took senior positions in his television business.

“Sharad Kumar has been asked to appear before the CBI between 11am and noon on Sat urday ,“ a source told TOI. Con firming the summons, a source close to the former Kalaignar TV MD said Kumar, who was in Delhi in connection with the Aircel-Maxis case, would take a late night flight to be in Chennai early on Saturday . An in sider said the investigating agency had “formidable evidence in physical and digital forms,“ besides statements from employees of BSNL and Sun Network. Earlier, CBI ques tioned Dayanidhi and a range of Sun employees from technical support head S Kannan to electricians.

Kumar is likely to be asked about details of uplinking of programmes using BSNL cables for Udaya and Gemini channels. Similar were the questions to former Sun Pictures CEO Saxena, who was interrogated for 10 hours across Wednesday and Thursday .

Saxena's replies were not always in the affirmative, but he didn't deny anything; he gave evasive replies like he didn't remember things, the source said.

The four-member CBI team from Delhi led by DSPs Rajesh and Mahender has been in the city for five days. Sources said investigators may summon more executives of the television network -former and serving -including those of its Malayalam, Telugu and Kannada channels in the coming days.

Four years after a complaint was made, the CBI started investigation in 2011 and filed an FIR in 2013, naming Dayanidhi and two former BSNL general managers K B Brahmadathan and M P Veluswami.

The investigation that had cooled off towards the fag end of the UPA government has now gathered steam again.

arun.ram@timesgroup.com

Admin · Guru

Jun 17 2014 : The Times of India (Chennai)

Noose tightens around Maran in BSNL case

Neeraj Chauhan

New Delhi

TNN

Intel Agency To Finalise Inquiry Soon

Trouble seems to be brewing for former telecom minister Dayanidhi Maran with CBI recently questioning him in the case related to alleged allocation of over 300 BSNL high-speed phone lines at his residence in Chennai. The three-yearold matter saw some movement in May-June with the agency interrogating Maran, besides officials of Sun group and department of telecom.

Sources said they want to finalise the inquiry soon as directed by the top brass. The case saw movement recently with the change of government as during UPA government, CBI had gone slow in its probe. CBI sources said Maran was examined last month in Delhi for his alleged involvement in allocation of the lines which were purportedly used by Sun TV, owned by his family.

The development comes at a time when the agency is waiting for the attorney general’s opinion in another case – Aircel-Maxis deal probe – against Maran, where CBI wants to know whether a chargesheet could be filed against him with the available evidence or not.

The agency had filed an FIR in the telephone lines case following its preliminary enquiry in which there was enough material to proceed with a regular case against Maran and BSNL officials — the then CGM K Brahmanathan and M P Veluswami.

According to the case, 323 residential lines allegedly in the name of BSNL general manager connected the Boat Club Road residence of Ma

ran with the office of Sun TV through a dedicated underground cable during his tenure as telecom minister, sources said. The probe had started in 2011, nearly four years after getting complaints that a ‘virtual’ telephone exchange was set up at the then telecom minister’s residence for facilitating data transfer from Sun TV.

The agency had recommended action to the then telecom secretary in 2007 but the department allegedly did not give its nod in the case, sources said. Finally, CBI filed a preliminary inquiry in 2011.

Sources said these lines were not ordinary telephone lines but costly ISDN, capable of carrying huge data, thus facilitating faster transmission of TV news and programmes across the globe.

CBI in its report to the telecom secretary had claimed that these lines were for use of large commercial enterprises to meet special needs such as video conferencing or transmission of huge volume of digital data for which heavy fee was charged but Sun TV got it for free.

Admin · Guru

Maran spent just Rs 5.54 lakh for poll campaign

— By FPJ Bureau, June 19, 2014 12:26 am

Chennai : Politicians who are crying hoarse over the Rs 70 lakh expenditure limit set by the Election Commission of India for campaigning in Lok Sabha polls could well learn some worthy tips from former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran, who claims to have kept his election expenses to less than one-tenth of the limit.

Maran, who failed in his bid to score a hat-trick win from the Central Chennai Parliamentary constituency this May, has in his election expenditure statement claimed that he spent just Rs 5.54 lakh for the whole campaign. A copy of his expenditure statement was made available by the Election Commission on Tuesday.

Significantly, even the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from the constituency J Prabakar, who had during the campaigning, alleged that Maran had overshot the Rs 70 lakh limit, has submitted that he spent Rs 6.66 lakh for the election, higher than the DMK’s star candidate.

In his complaint to the EC, the AAP candidate had sought disqualification of Maran. To buttress his allegation, he had said, “Maran had filed election an expenditure statement for the period April 4 to April 9 as Rs 44,630 only. For the same period, the shadow register of the EC shows his expenditure as Rs 61,64,200. Similarly, the declared expenditure for the period April 10 to April 15 by Maran is Rs.3,83,911. For the same period, the EC observers’ shadow register shows an expenditure of Rs. 20,14,791.”

Maran, who had then denied the allegations of overshooting the expenditure limit, has now shown that he has spend only a fraction of the limit set by the poll body.

http://freepressjournal.in/maran-spent-just-rs-5-54-lakh-for-poll-campaign/

Admin · Guru

Dayanidhi abused power to get Sun TV a free phone exchange

If you believe that Dayanidhi Maran and Sun TV, a company run by his brother Kalanidhi Maran, have no links, here’s the kicker: Dayanidhi gifted the latter a free telephone exchange paid for entirely by the exchequer.

In its 4 June issue, Tehelka magazine published an expose suggesting that Dayanidhi Maran had favoured the Malaysian Maxis Group with telecom licences and spectrum in return for which the Sun TV Group got over Rs 675 crore worth of investments from Maxis in its direct-to-home dish TV venture.

Dayanidhi gifted Kalanidhi a free telephone exchange paid for entirely by the exchequer. Reuters

Maran denied it, saying he was totally impartial, and that he had no stake in his brother’s business. In any case, he was not minister when the Maxis deal took place.

Now, his statement is likely to be challenged. According to an article by S Gurumurthy inThe New Indian Express, Dayanidhi, when he was Communications Minister in UPA-1, got a public sector company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL), to give his brother’s company 323 telephone lines for free in Chennai.

Gurumurthy, quoting a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) report, says that Dayanidhi got “all the 323 home lines listed not in his name but in the name of the Chief General Manager, BSNL, Chennai. These lines virtually constituted a telephone exchange in the minister’s home. It was exclusively used for his family business by laying a 3.4-km-long secret cable along public roads to connect the lines to the business premises (of Sun TV). This had caused huge loss to BSNL….The CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation), which probed the fraud, wrote to the Secretary, Telecom, on 9 September 2007 recommending action against Maran for the fraud.”

Now why would a Maran, with crores at stake in Sun TV, want to save money on a few phone lines?

Well, it wasn’t just that. Says the Express report: “They were no ordinary telephone lines, but costly ISDN lines, which could carry tons and tons of TV news and programmes faster than satellites to any part of the world. These lines, the CBI says in its report, are ‘normally used by medium to large commercial enterprises to meet special needs such as video conferencing, transmission of huge volume of digital data of audio and video’ — precisely the facility that Sun TV would need for its telecasting operations. For this, the Sun TV would have paid huge cost. But it got it all free, at government’s cost.”

Gurumurthy quotes the CBI as saying that the Maran home exchange was “programmed in such a way that no one other than the authorised BSNL staff were aware of the existence of such an exchange created for his [minister’s] exclusive use”….By linking the minister’s home and Sun TV office by the stealthy cables, “it would appear as if the lines were used in the residence of the former minister, but actually the cables laid facilitated Sun TV network to utilise the services of BSNL provided at his residence”.

This clearly gives the lie to Dayanidhi’s claims on Wednesday that he had no links to his brother’s Sun TV business, which was the focus of the Tehelka investigation. The market certainly believes a nexus exists, for shares of Sun Network and SpiceJet, owned by Kalanidhi, have crashed.

With so much skullduggery going on with the Marans and then Andimuthu Raja, one thing is certain: the top bosses of the UPA, Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, would certainly have been privy to CBI’s investigations or heard about it from their officials. But they did pretty little to stop the loot.

Whatever happened to governance under the UPA?

Admin · Guru

Jul 29 2014 : The Times of India (Chennai)

Is loss-ridden SpiceJet going Kingfisher way?

Saurabh Sinha & Shubham Mukherjee

New Delhi/Mumbai:

TNN

Staff Yet To Get Form 16 & TDS Proof | They Fear If LCC Deposited Money With I-T Dept

SpiceJet employees are a nervous lot these days. The loss-ridden low-cost carrier (LCC) deducted tax from their salaries but has neither given a TDS certificate, nor Form 16 so far — raising questions if the amount has indeed been deposited with the government. With the last date of filing tax return for fiscal 2013-14 just three days away, employees are sending frantic mails to the management but have not got any response from the airline so far.

“No one seems to know what’s happening in the airline as we have not got even a response or acknowledgement to our repeated mails to HR asking for Form 16. Pilots get a separate foreign travel allowance, which is Rs 1.2 lakh for captains and Rs 80,000 for co-pilots in April. This year even that money has not come,” said an employee. Incidentally, you cannot file a tax return without the Form 16.

Default on tax deposit is usually the first signs of a serious financial crisis in any corporate, which showed up when another airline, Kingfisher, started its downward spiral. With the memories of Vijay Mallya’s failed airline still fresh, SpiceJet employees are now worried about their airline’s future.

SpiceJet did not comment on this issue till the time of going to press. A SpiceJet in

sider, however, insisted their airline is not going the Kingfisher way . “There was an IT glitch which led to employees not getting their TDS forms.
This issue was to be resolved by last Friday and will definitely be sorted out on Monday ,“ the source said.

SpiceJet is owned by Kalanithi Maran's Sun Group with the promoter holding 53.48% stake in the airline through his personal holding and through Kal Airways.

Since the beginning of this year, SpiceJet has been regularly coming out with deep discount schemes in a bid to raise cash for meeting its working capital requirements. It has met with good success as well.
For the month of June, the airline posted the largest increase in market share on the back of these fare discounts. The lowfare airline added 1.1 % points to its market share over May to 19%, to take the number three spot, pipping Air India. The two others ahead of SpiceJet are IndiGo with 31.6% share and the Jet Air-Jet Lite combine with 19.6% share. In effect, it is within striking distance of the number two spot.

Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) India head Kapil Kaul said: “We estimate SpiceJet requires about $250 million as of March, 2014, to bring its books in order. It may require further fund infusion for growth and expansion.

Raising capital in the next one to three months is critical. The LCC’s restructuring efforts are not showing results largely due to very complex competitive dynamics. We expect a significant downsizing post a possible fund infusion.” Though many airlines have entered the Indian aviation space lately but most existing players are struggling financially. SpiceJet’s monetary woes are peaking at a time when the Directorate General Of Civil Aviation (DGCA) is conducting a financial audit of all Indian carriers. The last such audit in 2011-end had revealed “major financial distress” in two airlines — Kingfisher (which got grounded in October 2012) and Air India Express.