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The Corporate Affairs Minister Sachin Pilot said on Monday that his Ministry had so far not received any report on the probe by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) in the Tata-Unitech matter.
“'The Ministry has so far not received any such report,” Pilot told reporters, when asked about the SFIO probe. He was speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a CII event on corporate social responsibility.
Separately, a Ministry official said that the SFIO probe has been complete and the report was expected within a fortnight.
The Mumbai unit of the SFIO had reportedly conveyed to the Ministry in April that the Rs 1,700 crore given by the Tata Group to Unitech Group was meant to enable the latter purchase telecom licences in January 2008. This SFIO finding is part of a larger probe initiated against Vaishnavi Corporate Communications.
On the NSEL issue, Pilot said the Registrar Of Companies was looking into the alleged violations of the Companies Act by Financial Technologies (India) Ltd and its group companies.
When asked about the allegations made by the SFIO, a Tata Sons spokesperson said, “The Tata group has comprehensively addressed questions from all Government agencies and fully cooperated with all authorities in their investigations, including the SFIO. The group has not seen any SFIO report so far; as such, we are not in a position to address any specific questions relating to any such report. We stress that our group is committed to the highest standards of ethics and business conduct.”
Unitech denies allegations
Unitech said that the Tata-Unitech transaction was a legitimate and bona fide business transaction between two real estate companies. “In fact, contrary to what is being alleged, Tata Realty is in advance stage of completing a real estate development on the captioned land which is being marketed as “Tata Primanti”,” said Unitech spokesperson.
The Tata-Unitech transaction has been extensively investigated by several agencies including the CBI, and no irregularity has been found in this transaction according to the CBI presentation before the JPC quoted by the media, it added. “None of our companies are/ have been under any investigation by the SFIO. This fact can be independently corroborated from the list of companies under investigation and companies already investigated by the SFIO during the last 3 years, as provided by Sachin Pilot before the Rajya Sabha,” Unitech said.
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