Five years after the company was forced to shut down by the Department of Telecom, the Central Vigilance Commission has now started an investigation into possible links between Data Access and the Chinese Army.

Data Access was an international long distance (ILD) player, which offered services in India between 2002 and 2005.

Hong Kong-based Pacific Century Cyber Works (PCCW) held a significant stake in the company. DoT revoked the licences given to Data Access to 2005 after the company failed to clear dues of over Rs 200 crore.

CVC has now asked DoT to clarify whether the Chinese Army was holding 65 per cent stake in the Honk Kong-based foreign investor.

“Whether security of the country compromised by allowing Data Access to operate in India, despite knowing the fact that Chinese Army had a stake of 65 per cent in PCC,” the CVC has posed to DoT.

CVC has also asked DoT to state if there was any intervention by Mr A. Raja or Ms Kanimozhi in this case.

The vigilance commission has sent a set of 25 questions to DoT seeking information on foreign holding, name of the official in DoT who cleared the licence application from Data Access and why DoT had allowed the company to wind up before it paid the dues.

Data Access had also planned an Initial Public Offering in 2008 but was stopped by the Securities and Exchange Board of India.

The company was partly owned by Mr Siddartha Ray who was under the scanner of the Economic Offences Wing. When it was operational, the company was very aggressive in the market.

For example in 2003, when international long distance telephone tariffs were around Rs 24 a minute, Data Access had approached the telecom regulator with a proposal for revised tariffs of about Rs 12 a minute.

But then the trouble started as the company started defaulting on payment of interconnection charges to BSNL and MTNL.

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