New Delhi,By Ankur Sharma and Mahender Singh Manral,21 February 2015:-The billowing 'corporate espionage' smoke is getting murkier.
As the ambit of the Spygate investigation widened on Friday, five top corporate executives were arrested in connection with the sensational Petroleum Ministry documents leak case, taking the number of those arrested to 12.
Revelations from the leak suggest that corporates are allegedly running riot in the corridors of power and using the information arbitrage tool as leverage, seeking out government policies and plans in advance to benefit from them.
As the police suspect the involvement of more persons in the case, raids are being conducted at several places.
Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said the executives arrested on Friday are ADAG Reliance general manager Rishi Anand, Cairn Energy general manager K.K. Naik, Jubilant Energy senior executive Shubhash Chandra, RIL (corporate communication) manager Shailesh Saxena and Essar deputy general manager Vinay Kumar.
They have been booked under the Indian Penal Code’s Sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 411 (dishonestly receiving stolen property).
Sources said these five used to “buy” confidential documents directly from former petroleum ministry staffers Rakesh Kumar and Lalta Prasad, the brothers who were arrested from outside Shastri Bhavan on February 17.
The duo charged these top executives anything between Rs 5,000 and Rs 20,000 for the “service”.
There was also an arrangement for “premium service” if the document was critical.
Guilty to be punished
Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has said he wants the guilty to be brought to book and would comment only after the investigation is complete.
“Let the investigation be over. No one will be spared,” he said.
The investigation has revealed that Lalta Prasad and Rakesh Kumar, who used to work in the ministry earlier, operated two parallel networks.
They would sell documents to consultants and to these top executives as well.
Prayas Jain, a consultant arrested with former journalist Santanu Saikia who was taken into custody late on Wednesday, used to pay as much as Rs 65,000 for these documents, sources said.
The police have recovered the copy of a file, signed by various petroleum ministry officials, which is oddly dated 29.2.2015.
“Three pages of the upcoming Union Budget have also been found from the five persons arrested on Thursday. There is a strong possibility that major corporate companies sought information regarding the budget pointers so they could change their policies and strategy in time,” police sources said.
The information about the leakage of budget inputs comes only three days before the commencement of the budget session of Parliament.
During interrogation, Lalta and Rakesh told the police that they used to indiscriminately lift documents and, apart from them, the lower-rung staff in other ministries was also passing on official papers to Saikia and others.
“We would take the arrested persons to the ministries we think are involved in the leaks and bring them face-to-face with the government officials.
As the probe progresses, more names are likely to tumble out as the scourge isn’t restricted to only one or two ministries.
Many other corporate firms are also under the scanner for seeking important information through such intermediaries for long,” the sources added.
Explaining the modus operandi of the five arrested on Friday, police sources said that every presentation made by foreign firms to the petroleum ministry was leaked out to Indian corporate houses for a hefty price.
“The ministry got alarmed about such operations after a foreign company complained that it would not make any more presentations owing to the fears of information leak.
Several firms from abroad also realised that their presentations were being re-presented by some Indian corporates,” police sources said.
Delhi Police chief B.S. Bassi on Friday said: “Saikia and Jain ran an independent website where they uploaded the analyses of documents that were copies of the original. And this information was further used by corporate houses. They also shared this information with some individuals for monetary consideration.”
But he refused to reveal the names of the organisations that benefited from the operation.
“The investigation in the case is still on,” Bassi added.
It was nothing new for former journalist Saikia to get important papers leaked from various ministries. According to his official website, he has 4,065 reports related to various ministries, including various presentations, MoUs and data.
Surprisingly, a number of private and public sector units (PSUs) have been giving advertisements to Saikia’s website, indianpetro.com.
In a post on his Facebook page, Saikia has brought to the attention of his friends and visitors the way the government has been “misusing” the Official Secrets Act.
He also quotes The Week’s story of December 2010 on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which mentioned “my 10- year court battle to escape prosecution from the CBI”.
In a related development, a Delhi court on Friday sent four of the seven accused to police custody till February 23. Former journalist Santanu Saikia, energy consultant Prayas Jain and Rakesh Kumar and Lalta Prasad have been sent to police custody.
The other three — Asharam, Ishwar Singh and Raj Kumar Chaubey — have been sent to 14-day judicial custody.