Balwa taken to Delhi, company says ‘wrongly implicated’ (Second Lead)

MUMBAI - Shahid Balwa, managing director of DB Realty, was Wednesday taken to Delhi after a Mumbai court Wednesday granted a two-day transit remand to the CBI in the 2G scam but his company said he had been “wrongly implicated”.

Balwa, arrested in Mumbai late Tuesday by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), was presented before a court Wednesday morning and then taken to the airport for a flight to New Delhi.

He is set to appear for a court hearing in Delhi.

In its remand application, CBI said Balwa’s company Swan Telecom, which allegedly got favours in the spectrum allocation, had caused the national exchequer a loss of over Rs.22,000 crore.

It also said Balwa allegedly conspired with private companies to sell 2G spectrum licences acquired at a cheap rate by Swan Telecom — part of DB Realty — to a company in the Gulf at a huge profit.

But a spokesperson of DB Realty said that “neither Balwa nor any person or entity forming part of the DB Group has done anything illegal or inappropriate” and that he would be “strongly contesting the proceedings” against him.

Balwa became the fourth person — and the first who is not a government official — to be arrested in connection with the scam.

Former communications minister A. Raja and two of his aides are under arrest. The scam relates to irregularities in the allocation of second generation spectrum to telecom companies when Raja was the minister.

Swan Telecom is one of the companies that allegedly benefited from the spectrum allocation.

Established in the early 1970s, DB Realty Ltd is the flagship company of Dynamix Balwas Group.

DB Realty has said it would continue as usual under its managing director Vinod Goenkar and that stakeholders’ interests would be protected.