No liability whatsoever on Bharti Airtel: Manoj Kohli

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No liability whatsoever on Bharti Airtel: Manoj Kohli

In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Manoj Kohli, CEO, Bharti Airtel gave details of the period for which the independent special audit was carried out.

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Excerpts from What's Hot on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » ALSO READ See latest News about Bharti Airtel See previous management interviews See what other Experts & Brokerages are saying about Bharti Airtel Nifty BSE | NSE 29/05/12 Are Mutual Funds betting on Nifty? Other Stocks in this news Reliance Communications |

Q: Another issue is about the auditor stating at the very onset that they could not correlate a lot of the basic data with books of accounts and did not get data for matching with accounts. What do you make of observations to this effect in the report?

A: The operations of the company are very extensive across 23 circles of India. The data is hugely voluminous and the auditors did deploy a lot of audit methodologies on their own and as advised by the DoT.

Right through the audit there were transparent discussions and tripartite discussions between auditors, the company and DoT regularly on the progress of the audit, on how fast the data can be given to the auditors. The auditors did not ask all the questions at one go. They asked questions as they progressed in the audit.

And finally the auditors have acknowledged that the company provided all the information at the request of the auditors full access, rights on the oracle financial system which we have at Bharti were given where in complete records of revenue were maintained, were provided to the auditors completely.

All other data whenever requested has been extracted from our financial system and furnished to the auditors. So I am confident that all data was provided but because it is so voluminous there may have been some extra time taken maybe a week or ten days. But all that was done transparently keeping DoT on line.

Q. The other issue raised in the report pertains to whether license fee needs to be paid on notional capital gains where the company has hived off its tower business to bharti infratel? You have apparently supplied three legal opinions to support your argument...and the auditor has left it for dot to consider. What do you have to say on this - and is this just one instance or there are any other similar issues in the fineprint of the audit report?

A: There are many issues which earlier have been clarified or decided by the TD-SAT, there are many issues which are in courts of law, so auditors have left the decision to the DoT and now it is our duty to review and have a transparent discussion with te DoT on those issues, those issues are interpretation issues and they impact the entire industry including the private and public sector.

So we would like to go back but from our point of view we are vey clear that the findings of the special auditors have validated the belief of our company and have confirmed that all payments of licence fee and spectrum charges are as per licensed conditions or as per the applicable rulings of the TDSAT.

It is also very clear that the auditors did quantify the amount of the licence fee and even in those cases the TDSAT has ruled in the favor of industry, so that also is very important to note. Finally we are really happy that this audit is another testimony to Bharti Airtel's professional management commitment and responsibility to its share holders, the government and regulatory bodies and very strong confirmation of the fact that Bharti Airtel always maintains highest standards of professional integrity by appointing best in class statutory as well as internal auditors.