Government to look into insider trading in US-64
New Delhi—Yashwant Sinha, Union finance minister, while ruling out budgetary support for the US-64 scheme said the government will investigate if Unit Trust of India (UTI) had functioned along commercial lines in the last several years and also if the huge redemptions US-64 during April-May this year smacked of insider trading. He did not rule out the possibility of the investigation being handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The independent inquiry pertained to corporates and individuals having prior information that UTI is set to impose a freeze on sales and redemptions in US-64 for a period of six months till the end of December 2001.
While not laying out the details Sinha indicated that Infrastructure Leasing & Financial Services, a public sector leasing and finance company -- then headed by former UTI chairman P S Subramanyam -- may have had prior information about the forthcoming UTI decision.
He also he had some bit of information that he would not like to share with anyone.
The probe, he said, would also look at how much information was shared with the board of trustees and whether it was privy to all the decisions taken by the UTI management.
The finance minister announced that the government may appoint its own nominee at the UTI board in order to avoid such problems in future. Till 1997, there used to be one government nominee in the UTI board, but the practice was discontinued later.
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Govt nod for 6 bids for 4th cellular operators berth
New Delhi--The government has given the in principle nod to all the remaining six bidders including Bharti, Reliance, Escotel, Hutchison, BPL-Batata and Indmobile to participate in the financial bidding process for the fourth cellular operators berth following a pre-bid qualification round held today to scrutinize the applications filed by the bidders in terms of meeting the eligibility criteria.
The government today also referred the bids it to the Telecom Engineering Council (TEC) for approval.
The first round of bidding scheduled to take place on July 11 is only of academic importance, since none of the 17 circles have received more than four bids. The bidding in 15 circles will now effectively have only two rounds of competitive bidding with the first round being used only for setting the floor price for the second round.
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