blogs.wsj.com The Indian government laid out startling new details Friday about its wiretapping of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia, stating in a Supreme Court affidavit that it started the phone intercepts after receiving a complaint alleging that Ms. Radia was a foreign intelligence agent.
- Corporate lobbyist Niira Radia at the Enforcement Directorate last month after being questioned by financial authorities.
The government’s probe of Ms. Radia’s alleged spying is connected to a separate investigation into the telecom ministry’s distribution of so-called 2G mobile phone spectrum to companies in 2008, according to the affidavit.
Despite all that detail, the affidavit still leaves a few mysteries.Leaked recordings of some of Ms. Radia’s calls with journalists and political power brokers were published last month in some Indian news outlets, fueling controversy over the spectrum allotment, which a government auditor said favored a few firms and deprived India of up to $40 billion in potential revenue by selling frequencies at heavy discounts to their true value.
The affidavit was filed Friday by a top income tax department official in response to a Supreme Court petition by industrialist Ratan Tata that asked for an inquiry into the leaks.
The government affidavit says the wiretap of Ms. Radia began after the Finance Ministry received a complaint in November 2007 from an undisclosed source alleging that she was “an agent of foreign intelligence agencies and that she was indulging in anti-national activities.”
But the wiretap didn’t start right away. It took nine months for India’s income tax department to start intercepting Ms. Radia’s phone calls. In August 2008, the affidavit says, the agency sought and quickly obtained the Home Ministry’s approval to tap 14 of her phone lines and those of her associates.
That stint of wiretapping lasted for two contiguous segments of 60 days each, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit doesn’t say why the income tax department, rather than one of the central government’s intelligence agencies, was tasked with doing the intercepts in a potential case of spying.
In a statement, Ms. Radia’s firm, Vaishnavi Corporate Communications, denied that Ms. Radia indulged in any anti-national activities, and said, “There are corporate vested interests which circulated an inadmissible and forged letter with malicious, baseless and derogatory content in November 2007. We reached out to the media then and denied the same.”
The statement said the company hopes “the forces working overtime to harm us will be duly identified and punished.”
According to the affidavit, the government restarted the wiretaps of Ms. Radia after a break of about five months.
In May 2009, tax investigators submitted another proposal to intercept calls on six of Ms. Radia’s lines for another 60 days, the affidavit said. The Home Ministry again approved the request, it said.
The affidavit shows how the “Radia tapes” turned into the “2G spectrum tapes.” In November 2009, the Central Bureau of Investigation, India’s top investigative agency and the body that was looking into the questionable allotment of cellphone spectrum, wrote to the income tax department saying “it has been reliably learnt that certain middlemen” including Ms. Radia “were actively involved” in a conspiracy, according to the affidavit.
The letter asked the tax department to make available to CBI “any information or records pertaining to any middleman including Ms. Nira Radia regarding award of (telecom licenses),” according to the affidavit.
On Dec. 23, 2009, the affidavit says, the income tax department handed over to the CBI 1,450 call records from Ms. Radia’s phone including 100 hours of recordings.
In May 2010, the CBI asked for all the remaining Radia recordings, the affidavit says, and the income tax department later turned over all 5,800.
The income tax department said in the affidavit it doesn’t know who is responsible for the leak of the tapes and said such a public disclosure of its intercepts has never happened.
The affidavit said the telecom ministry would be responsible for taking action against any service provider—meaning telecom companies—if they are found to have leaked the intercepts. Telecom companies assist the government in conducting surveillance.
The affidavit said the government strictly followed all protocol in protecting the recordings from being publicly disseminated.
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