Aircel-Maxis deal: CBI seeks to arrest 2 Malaysian businessmen

The CBI on Monday moved an application before a designated court here for issuance of arrest warrants against two Malaysian businessmen in connection with its probe in the Aircel-Maxis deal. The Aircel-Maxis deal had taken place during Dayanidhi Maran’s tenure in the Sanchar Bhawan.

The CBI moved the designated court of O.P. Saini with an application for issuing arrest warrants against Augustus Ralph Marshall and T. Ananda Krishnan as the duo failed to appear before the agency despite being summoned four times by the court. The court has fixed August 27 as the next date of hearing on whether to accept the CBI request for issuance of arrest warrants.

The summons to the duo were sent to the Malaysian attorney general through diplomatic channel, the CBI said. The chargesheet in the Aircel-Maxis deal alleged that former communications minister Dayanidhi Maran had received a bribe of `742 crore for coercing entrepreneur C. Sivasankaran to sell his telecom company Aircel to Malaysia-based Maxis. The agency also named Maran’s brother Kalanithi, T. Ananda Krishnan, promoter of Maxis based in Malaysia, Augustus Ralph Marshall, who headed Maxis’s subsidiary Astro All Asia Network and companies Sun Direct, Astro All Asia Network among others.

Maxis Communications and South Asia Entertainment, Mauritius. The agency had claimed that although Malaysia had not responded to Letters Rogatory (LRs) sent by it, the agency was able to piece together the money trail from the responses of judicial requests sent to Mauritius, the United Kingdom and the Isle of Man. CBI had chargesheeted them for the alleged offences under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of IPC and relevant provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act.