The Italian police has provided all the details of the bribe-takers in the chopper scam on a silver platter. All that the Central Bureau of Investigation has to do here is corroborate the evidence and prosecute the bribe takers. Will itIJ
There have been two recent instances of Central Bureau of Investigation intervention. First, the arrest of a constable of the Border Security Force, and second, the arrest of a proprietor of a Bangalore-based coaching centre in a case related to bribery and other offences for recruitment in BSF and other Central Para Military Organisations. This, followed by the arrest of a senior accounts officer in the Ministry of Agriculture for demanding and accepting bribe of Rs55,000 from a complainant. But what about the big fishIJ
Mid-April, the CBI woke from slumber after being deep in the arms of Morpheus for close to three years. True to its form, it said that it had ‘more or less’ established the ‘corruption’ link in the Rs3,546 crore AgustaWestland VIP chopper scandal. One wondered which new Manali strain they were smokingIJ For this revelation came over three years after the Italian Arma dei Carabinieri (military police) swooped down in Sesto Calende, 60 km north of Milan, charging down to the home of the CEO of the prestigious industrial and defence behemoth Finmeccanica Giuseppe Orsi, ‘Pippo’ to friends, who was then arrested on corruption charges in 2010 for the sale of 12 VIP choppers to India.
The trail ran all the way to South Block where former Indian Air Force chief SP Tyagi alongwith others was charged. A sum of €51 million (Rs362 crore), approximately 10 per cent of the deal, was believed to have been paid as bribe to Italians and Indians for the deal. According to Italian police, Tyagi, as the chief of the Indian Air Force, between 2004 and 2007, received a yet-to-be-quantified amount in kickbacks when India signed a €560 million (Rs3,546 crore) deal to buy choppers from Finmeccanica’s helicopter arm AgustaWestland. The CBI filed its preliminary enquiry in March 2013, so far so good.
In April, an Italian court sentenced Orsi and AgustaWestland boss Bruno Spagnolini for ‘bribing’ Indian officials. So, what was the CBI waiting forIJ DoomsdayIJ All the hard work had been done by the Carabinieri officials in Italy in February 2013. In their 64-page report, filed before Italian prosecutors in Naples on February 12, 2013, Italian police named three Tyagi brothers who are Tyagi’s cousins: Sanjeev Kumar Tyagi alias ‘Julie’, Sandeep Tyagi and Docsa Tyagi. They, the prosecution charged, got €400,000 from Orsi and Spagnolini to bribe Tyagi while he was Air chief between December 2004 and March 2007. All the details relating to the murky and complicated payoff trail of €51 million were disclosed in the same report filed by the Italian investigators.
It beat me that a well fleshed out investigation like the one done by the Italian police, which in February 2013, documented the payoffs, the exact money trail and provided on the proverbial silver platter to the Indian investigators details of the bribe for the chopper scam, was not paid adequate attention. It was clear as Delhi’s daylight that the CBI was working on its own timetable when all it needed to do was to interrogate the alleged accused which they did over time and corroborate all that was mentioned in the report and get on with filing a chargesheet and making provision for a trial in a court of law to seek convictions. Instead it sat, Waiting for Godot or someone closely resembling him to appear.
According to the original 2013 Italian Armed Police report, the invoices issued by Integrated Defence Staff, India and Tunisia “indicated in detail the giving of funds intended to reward the consultants and to remunerate India’s corrupt public officials”. Besides the Tyagi brothers, middleman Christian Michel was allegedly engaged by the Italian company along with Guido Haschke to facilitate the deal, and separately paid €30 million. Michel reported directly to Finmeccanica boss Giuseppe Orsi. He was the second alleged middleman employed by the company apart from Haschke. Michel, a consultant for AgustaWestland, is the shadowy owner of Global Service Trade Commerce, headquartered in london, and Global Service Fez Dubai. The middlemen had then claimed that 60 per cent of the commission went to the Tyagi family and that the remainder was kept by the facilitators. .
According to the report filed in the Italian court, the company got monthly remittances to the tune of €510,000 till December 2012 over the previous year. False liabilities of €977,263 were shown in 2008. In 2009, €507,988 were received on the basis of invoices for non-existent operations by IDS India. In 2010, when the VVIP helicopter deal was signed, the amount transferred was €6,120,000. Another tranche of €6,392,020 was received using invoices for non-existent operations in 2011.
Investigations revealed that one of the middlemen met Tyagi at his cousins office in 2006 along with Carlo Gerosa, another middleman, and the Air chief’s cousin. In this meeting the technical features of the AW101 helicopter were discussed. AgustaWestland had prepared a technical paper which was presented at the meeting. The probe made it clear that intermediaries were used by AgustaWestland despite the Indian rule against the use of such facilitators. The helicopter could qualify for the Indian contract only after the specifications were lowered for the requirement of a rot or wing aircraft that can fly up to an altitude of 15,000 feet as against 18,000 feet stipulated earlier.
Now pray, what did the CBI need to do other than corroborationIJ It was a well laid-out smorgasbord before them, the CBI could pick and choose what they wanted to eat. The same probe documents were used by the Milan court to sentence Orsi to four-and -a-half-years jail and Spagnolini to four years jail for corruption in early April. In its FIR, the CBI had named 13 persons and entities linked to the payoffs, but has been sucking on the tailpipe since. Now, will India’s premier investigating agency get cracking and use the convictions in Italy to prosecute the Tyagis and companyIJ