The 2G Court on Saturday took cognisance of the chargesheet filed by Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the Aircel-Maxis scam and summoned all the accused, including former Telecom Minister Dayanidhi Maran, on July 11.
Besides Dayanidhi, Special Judge OP Sani passed the summoning orders also against the former Minister’s brother and Sun TV Group chief Kalanidhi Maran, his wife Kaveri, Sun TV MD K Shanmugham and two companies belonging to the group — Sun Direct and South Asia FM.
Following the CBI’s chargesheet, the ED had filed chargesheet under Prevention of Money laundering Act (PMlA) against the four people and two companies for receiving a bribe of Rs743 crore from Malaysian company Maxis, which acquired Aircel.
The ED in its chargesheet said the probe is going on against FIPB violations in the Aircel-Maxis deal involving former Finance Minister P Chidambaram and his son Karti. The probe is also going on against bribe givers T Ananda Krishnan and Ralph Marshall, promoters of the Malaysian company. Both the Malaysian businessmen have not yet appeared in the 2G court in the case.
The court has already sent letter Rogatory (lR) to Singapore upon ED’s petition to track down the financial details of Karti-controlled company Advantage Strategic Consulting limited involved in the money trail with Maxis and Aircel promoters. Apart from this, four lRs were sent by the court to Malaysia, Mauritius and UK.
The lR to Malaysia was sent to track down the kickback money trail of Maxis. The lR to UK was sent to get the financial transactions between NDTV and Maxis subsidiary Astro Asia worth 50 million dollars that happened during the scam period in 2006-2007.