India's Shocking Corruption Scams

2G Spectrum scam:

The 2G spectrum scam involved government officials illegally undercharging mobile telephony companies for frequency allocation licenses, which would then be used to create 2G subscriptions for cell phones. As per Comptroller and Auditor General of India based on 3G and BWA spectrum auction prices in 2010, the shortfall between the money collected and the money which the law mandated to be collected is estimated to be 176,645 crore.  

The speculations of profit, loss and no-loss were put to rest in February this year when the Supreme Court of India delivered judgement on a public interest litigation (PIL) which was directly related to the 2G spectrum scam. The Supreme Court quashed all the 122 licenses issued in 2008 during tenure of A. Raja (then minister for communications & IT) the main official accused in the 2G scam case. The court said that A. Raja "wanted to favour some companies at the cost of the public exchequer" and "virtually gifted away important national asset." On 3 August 2012, as per the directions of the Supreme Court, Govt of India revised the base price for 5 MHz 2G spectrum auction to 14,000 crore, which roughly gives the value of spectrum to be around 2,800 crore  per MHz that is close to the CAG's estimate of 3,350 crore per MHz.

Telgi and stamp paper scam:

The Stamp paper scam or the Telgi scam involved printing duplicate stamp papers and selling them to banks and other institutions. The scam was discovered in 2003. The fake stamp and stamp paper case had penetrated 12 states and was estimated at a whooping 20000 crore plus. The Telgi evidently had a lot of support from government departments that were responsible for the production and sale of high security stamps.