New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate will soon issue Letters Rogatory to ten countries as part of its probe in the multi-crore 2G spectrum scam.

Official sources said the Directorate, which has already contacted its counterparts in 10 countries, where imprints of the telecom scam are allegedly visible, will now adopt a formal route.

They said the ED will soon seek for LRs to be issued in connection with the case, asking for details about financial transactions and background of certain entities doing business in those countries.

A Letter Rogatory is a formal request issued by a competent court to a foreign court and processed by the Ministry of External Affairs on behalf of the investigative agencies to obtain information about individuals and entities.

Sources said the ten countries in question include tax havens like Isle of Man, Cyprus and Mauritius besides UAE, Norway, Singapore, Libya, and Russia.

They said ED feels that some entities operating in those countries were connected with the spectrum allocation besides certain others who later bought stakes in Indian companies that had bagged the allocation.

Most of the companies that had bagged the spectrum had their subsidiaries and business partners situated in foreign countries.

Untangling the financial transactions web spread across various countries is what the ED is focusing on. The ED has already finished the first round of its probe with all the main telecom companies allegedly involved in the scam.

The companies have submitted details about their financial transactions, foreign holding, the financial backers and information about their subsidiaries. The Directorate, which has studied the details closely, will now have a second round of questioning with the telecom firms.

The Central Bureau is already investigating the case and had recently conducted raids at the premises of certain former telecom Ministry officials and former Telecom Minister A Raja.

The ED has registered a case in this connection under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.

New Delhi: The CBI has recorded the statement of senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh in connection with the agency's probe in the allocation of spectrum between 2001 and 2007. CBI sources said the agency completed recording of Singh's statement this week.

Singh, the Finance Minister in the NDA regime, was heading the Group of Ministers (GoM) on the issue of limited mobility and unified licencing during the relevant period. The CBI has registered a Preliminary Enquiry to probe the role of former Telecom Ministers between 2001 and 2007.

BJP's Arun Shourie and late BJP leader Pramod Mahajan were telecom ministers between 2001 and 2003 and Dayanidhi Maran during UPA government. The CBI has already recorded the statement of Shourie.

New York: Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is in Washington, is coming here Sunday to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the wake of a controversy over the role of Home Minister P. Chidambaram in the allocation of 2G spectrum.
Mukherjee is in Washington to attend the World Bank-IMF meetings over the weekend. He was scheduled to fly back home Sunday, but changed his plans in view of the controversy, according to diplomatic sources.

He is also scheduled to address the media in Washington later Friday instead of Sunday as planned earlier, but he is unlikely to speak about the finance ministry note on the second generation (2G) spectrum case to the Prime Minister's Office.

In New York, Mukherjee had Wednesday acknowledged the existence of the March note saying the airwaves could have been auctioned in 2008 if Chidambaram, the then finance minister, had "stuck to his stand".

He, however, avoided direct comment on the note from his ministry saying the matter was sub-judice.

In the note, the finance ministry says Chidambaram, one of the government's most high-profile ministers, could have prevented spectrum from being given away at throwaway prices by insisting on its auction -- implying that presumptive losses worth thousands of crores could have thus been avoided.

The note, which was apparently shown to Mukherjee and accessed by an application under the Right to Information Act, was prepared by a deputy secretary in the finance ministry and sent to the Prime Minister's Office March 25.

Manmohan Singh and Mukherjee, called up Chidambaram over the controversy Wednesday night and were assured that he will not speak on the issue till their return.

New Delhi: As speculation mounts on the equation between Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Home Minister P. Chidambaram, who has been named in the 2G scam, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi has directed top leaders to put up a joint defence, party insiders said. Gandhi, who has recently returned after a surgery abroad, is learnt to have stepped in to resolve the crisis involving one of the government's most high profile ministers.

The controversy surfaced after a RTI answer revealed that the finance ministry - headed by Mukherjee - had sent a note to the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) in March 2011 that 2G spectrum licences would have been auctioned in 2008 if then finance minister Chidambaram had acted.

This has led to the opposition asking for Chidambaram's resignation and speculation that things are not as they should be between the two ministers.

"Soniaji has asked all top leaders - from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to party spokespersons - to defend Chidambaram and the government," a senior Congress leader said on condition of anonymity.

"She knows that this is an explosive issue. Yesterday it was A. Raja and Dayanidhi Maran (ministers who had to quit over the 2G spectrum row), today it is Chidambaram and tomorrow it can be Manmohan Singh. She wants to stop the slide," he added.

Corporate Affairs Minister M. Veerappa Moily's strong defence of Chidambaram Friday and the home minister's statement that he would not comment on the issue till the prime minister returns from his foreign visit are learnt to have been directed by Gandhi.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the AIADMK have launched a vehement attack on the government and demanded Chidambaram's resignation.

Though Congress leaders deny talk of a Mukherjee-Chidambaram rift being the root cause behind the controversial note, political analysts and party insiders say there is a "recurring cold war" between the two.

"The rivalry between the two financial wizards have been escalating in the past two years. Soniaji was aware of the issue and had intervened to defuse the situation occasionally," said a Congress leader.

"The cold war has been surfacing through various incidents and on different occasions. A major incident was when Mukherjee confirmed June 22 that he had suspected that his finance ministry offices were bugged in September 2010 and had sought a secret inquiry," said an analyst.

The needle of suspicion then had pointed to intelligence agencies controlled by Chidambaram's home ministry.

Supporters of Mukherjee are believed to have told Gandhi that the veteran leader's trouble-shooting capabilities and political skills were often ignored and "administrative tough actions" advocated by Chidambaram were enforced, leading to fresh crises.

"The latest example was the handling of the fast by civil society leader Anna Hazare in August," said another party leader.

He said Hazare was arrested Aug 16 on the direction of Chidambaram, prompting massive protests that led to the activist being released.

The group of ministers led by Chidambaram, who were handling the Hazare fast, was replaced by a team led by Mukherjee and Law Minister Salman Khurshid. The new team could broker peace and end the 10-day-old fast by Hazare, the Congress leader added.

Kerala-based political analyst B.R.P. Bhaskar said that the Mukherjee-Chidambaram rift may continue till Rahul Gandhi takes a more leading role in the Congress. "Some infighting had been common in Congress... With a member of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty usually on the top slot earlier, the fight had been for the second or the third place.

"But now it is different. With Sonia Gandhi recuperating and Rahul Gandhi yet to take over the top post in the party or the government, several leaders and ministers will be working against each other," Bhaskar said.

New Delhi: The Congress Friday defended union Home Minister P. Chidambaram, whose resignation has been demanded by the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party for his alleged role in the 2G spectrum scam, and said the matter was sub judice as a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) was looking into telecom policy from 1998-2010.

Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said: "The matter should be left to the wisdom of the JPC, which has representation from all sides of political spectrum."

He said the telecom sector, which has been a success story in liberalised Indian economy, has been "the most litigated sector" and "each nuance of telecom policy was in court".

"Without undermining the privilege of the JPC, we can also raise questions to counter the queries being raised by the BJP," said Tewari.

The Congress spokesperson asked: "Why the spirit of the national telecom policy was violated by the NDA regime and why universal access licence system was ushered in by it?"

The BJP has asked for Chidambaram's resignation citing a note from the finance ministry to the Prime Minister's Office that he could have stopped the 2G spectrum sale. Chidambaram was holding the finance portfolio in 2008.

Washington: Amid the raging controversy back home over the 2G spectrum auction issue, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has said he will speak on it only when he reaches India on Monday.

"I told you that my question is only addressed to that (2G). What is to be told there, I will tell it there (in India), not now," Mukherjee told a group of Indian journalists in Washington. He is scheduled to meet Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New York Sunday before he leaves for India later in the evening.

Singh is in New York to attend the 66th session of the United Nations General Assembly. Even though Mukherjee's departure from Washington has been preponed by a day to accommodate for his unscheduled meeting with the Prime Minister, officials said the finance minister would fulfill all his engagements in Washington.

Instead of Sunday afternoon, he would now leave Washington for New York on Saturday evening after attending the reception of the State Bank of India, they said. He is expected to fly to New York and stay in the same hotel as that of the Prime Minister.