Younger brother sees rivals hand in audit report leak,seeks probe

Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani on Thursday said that he would lodge a police complaint and register a case with the Securities and Exchange Board of India....

Reliance Communications chairman Anil Ambani on Thursday said that he would lodge a police complaint and register a case with the Securities and Exchange Board of India Sebi against the people responsible for the hammering of the stocks of the company. In a remark,which he repeated several times during a teleconference,Ambani also said that known corporate rivals were behind the vicious campaign to hammer down share prices of his group companies.

We are lodging a formal complaint with Sebi to probe the hammering of our group stocks over the past few days. We are lodging a formal complaint with the cyber crime police authorities to investigate the dissemination of false and malicious e-mails against our group from bogus IDs. We will take up the conduct and actions of the special auditors with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India through our statutory auditors, Ambani said in a teleconference on Thursday.

Ambani said that a similar campaign was unleashed against another group company Reliance Power when it was launching IPO. This time too,all these events are being stage-managed and blown out of proportion by our known corporate rivals,at a time when there are important developments concerning our Group. Though he did not name the rivals,he said that they were indulging in nefarious activities and orchestrating the campaign when the group has filed the draft prospectus for Reliance Infratel IPO and the all-important hearings in the gas matter are coming up before the Supreme Court next week.

Ambani made the statement within days of what he called leakage of a report by a government-appointed auditor that alleged overstatement of revenues by about Rs 3,000 crore and evasion of over Rs 300 crore in licence fee by RCom. He said he would take up with the Telecom Ministry and others the issues raised in the special audit report,adding that if there are any legitimate dues found payable towards licence fee,RCom shall naturally make payment of the same.

Regarding the special audit,Ambani said that as per the licence terms and conditions,DoT had appointed special auditors in early 2009 to examine the records of all major telecom operators,including RCom,Bharti Airtel,Vodafone,Tata and Idea. For the past five days,even before a copy of the alleged special audit report on RCom was made available to us,selective extracts from the same were shockingly leaked and widely distributed to the media 8211; clearly indicating the hidden intent and malafide design, Ambani said.

The most crucial aspect of the matter,which is conveniently being ignored,is that all these revenue figures have been reported by the company itself in its filings with the stock exchanges,DoT and TRAI every quarter and it was not something discovered by the special auditors,he said. RCom shares have fallen 8 per cent in the last three days and 28 per cent in October to close at Rs 229.20 today.