India's federal investigative agency CBI, is considering filing a case or multiple cases against Reliance Industries over its operations of its gas block in the Krishna Godavari (KG) basin, the Mint reported on Tuesday.
But today The CBI has almost finished investigations against former director general of Hydrocarbons (DGH) V K Sibal and Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) in the KG Basin contract case and FIRs are likely to be registered soon. A senior CBI official told "We have found complicity of Sibal with RIL." Officials said Sibal and some Reliance officials would be formally questioned now.
The allegations against Sibal in one of the PEs is that he favoured RIL and approved an increase in capital expenditure from $2.4 billion to $8.8 billion for KG D6 field between September and December 2006 for which he got personal favours from RIL. "We have almost finished the enquiries. The final go-ahead would be given by top brass after which regular case would be registered," said a source. In the one case Sibal allegedly favoured a US-based oil exploration company - GX Technology - by escalating the cost which caused a loss of Rs 400 Cr to the exchequer. The agency is preparing to send a letter rogatory to US to get more information about GX Technology. After registering the case, CBI had raided Sibal's residence and documents related to the case were recovered, said sources. The raids were conducted in Noida, Delhi, Dehradun and Mumbai.
Earlier this month, Reliance Industries said there was no evidence to suggest that costs in development of the country's key natural gas field in the KG basin were overstated. A Reliance Industries spokesman in Mumbai and a spokeswoman for the CBI in New Delhi declined to comment on the newspaper report, when reached by Reuters on Tuesday. The federal auditor CAG has criticised Reliance Industries and the government over development of a key natural gas field in the KG basin and called for revamping profit sharing arrangements from oil and gas blocks.
Apart from Sibal, the other accused in the first case are ex-chief geologist D K Rawat; then adviser - geophysics S K Jain, former accounts department head K A Murli, then adviser (contracts) Anurit Sahi, ex-finance manager TSLN Reddy, then chief chemist Savendra Gupta, GX Technology and the company's manager of exploration Sujata Subramaniam.
