A spokesperson for the Anil Ambani-led Reliance group said on Saturday that the group was shocked to see reports about so-called tapes of phone conversations allegedly tapped by the Essar group between 2001 and 2006.
The company referred to the “completely illegal and criminal tapping of phones of some individuals in our group, allegedly done by vested interests more than 10-15 years ago, in the period prior to the reorganisation of the Reliance Group.”
A spokesperson for Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) headed by Mukesh Ambani said on Friday, “We have at all times fully complied with the laws of the land in all our business activities, and to suggest otherwise is criminally defamatory.”
RIL also demanded fair investigations into the matter.
According to the 29-page letter sent by Supreme Court lawyer Suren Uppal to Prime Minister Narendra Modi — which The Hindu has accessed — Essar also recorded internal conversations of their own employees.
Cabinet Ministers tapped The letter says in one such conversation between two senior Essar employees, “there is clear admission of the Essar Group having influenced the Central Bureau of Investigation that was investigating the 2G scam and managing the government officials concerned to deal with M/s Essar with kid gloves and to soften its investigations.”
This intercept and hundreds of others were collected by Al Basit Khan, a former Essar employee, and handed over to him, the lawyer claims.
Mr. Uppal claims that some of the intercepts are conversations between top banking officials who were part of a lending committee and were involved in the financial restructuring of Essar Oil.
The group also illegally listened in on senior PSU officials who were then involved in deciding about divestment, he alleges.
PMO also infiltrated The intercepts include conversations of key members of the PMO under Atal Bihari Vajpayee such as N.K. Singh, Ranjan Bhattacharya and Brajesh Mishra. Calls of senior Cabinet Ministers such as the then Telecom Minister, late Pramod Mahajan, and Petroleum Minister Ram Naik too were tapped.
