Union Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has asked RAW, the country’s premier foreign intelligence agency, to investigate an alleged “link” between the lawyers for Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and the umpire in the arbitration tribunal that’s adjudicating since 2011 in a dispute over costs related to Panna, Mukta and Tapti (PMT) oil and gas fields.
On one side of the dispute is the government, arrayed on the other side are RIL and British Gas (BG). Reliance Industries and BG hold 30 per cent each — state-run Oil & Natural Gas Corp (ONGC) holds 40 per cent interest — in the PMT fields. Pradhan has also ordered “exploring the possibility of handing over case to Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) on the issue of notional income tax” where the government maintains that Reliance Industries-BG are claiming a higher income tax deduction than what they pay.
These decisions on a RAW and SFIO probe were taken at a meeting mid-November between Pradhan, Petroleum Secretary Saurabh Chandra, and the government’s senior advocate Indu Malhotra. Malhotra, according to records accessed by The Indian Express, is the one who red-flagged the alleged conflict of interest. She told Pradhan of her “suspicion that the Presiding Arbitrator (Christopher Lau) still has continuing connection with Allen & Overy (solicitor firm for RIL and BG in the arbitration)”.
When arbitration began in 2011, Lau, a Singapore-based lawyer, had declared to both sides — the then UPA government and RIL-BG — that his daughter had worked for Allen & Overy. Lau was selected as neutral umpire by then government-appointed arbitrator ex-Supreme Court judge Justice B P Jeevan Reddy and the RIL-BG arbitrator Peter Leaver.
Read full story: Govt asks RAW to probe Reliance lawyers, looks at Fraud office to check ‘unpaid tax’