Corporate espionage: Accused had live information from the ministry

New Delhi, Feb 23: Even as the Crime Branch of the Delhi police registered a second FIR in the corporate espionage case, investigations have found that a CAG report on hydrocarbon production had been leaked.

The investigators say that what is shocking is the speed with which these persons had worked on procuring the documents. There are at least 100 documents which had not even reached the Prime Minister's office and they had been leaked before hand.

Some leaked documents were not signed too:

The entire team behind this scam had worked like professionals. What is shocking is the kind of access they had to information and also the network they had built up.

The crime branch this morning arrested another petroleum ministry official who is alleged to be part of this racket. The accused persons had built up a network so strong that they found it easy to access files that had not been signed too.

It was found that the moment some topic was discussed within the ministry, it was leaked almost immediately. Nearly 100 documents have been found in the possession of the accused which had not reached the top level, but had somehow managed to slip out of the ministry.

Leaked in the planning stages:

The accused have managed to tap people within the ministry who kept a close watch on the proceedings. There were confidential meetings that took place almost everyday.

The accused persons had managed to get down even the minutes of such meetings irrespective of the decisions being final or not. This indicates that the kind of interest these persons had in the petroleum ministry in particular.

Documents, chits, notes have been found in the possession of the accused. It was as though they had live information from the ministry and this was largely thanks to the strong network that they had built up over the years.

Highly classified documents:

Several documents that have been leaked from the ministry are highly classified. While it had been found that expansion plans, pricing related documents had been leaked, the next round of investigations have unearthed more.

The government is involved in arbitration with several of these corporates over pricing issues. There would be regular discussions by the legal team in the ministry and these details too were leaked to the corporates.

The minutes of the meeting pertaining to the legalities had come in handy for the corporates who positioned themselves before the arbitrator based on the information that had been leaked.

The investigators have also found that a report of the public accounts committee and documents relating to coal block had also been leaked.

OneIndia News