In a big diplomatic victory, the Indian Government on Tuesday night brought back AgustaWestland chopper scam prime middleman Christian Michel from the UAE.
On arrival at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Michel was formally arrested and taken to the CBI headquarters. He will kept in a safe house before being produced in Patiala House Court on Wednesday. The agency will seek his custodial interrogation, said a senior CBI official.
The CBI press release said the deportation of Michel from the UAE was coordinated by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval and CBI interim chief M Nageswar Rao.
According to senior officials, the UAE Government ordered Michel’s deportation on Tuesday afternoon and within hours Michel was handed over to Indian authorities, led by CBI Joint Director Sai Manohar, who were in Dubai for the past two days.
UAE Government’s final order on the deportation came after Michel lost his appeal in the apex court there. Incidentally, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is in Dubai for high-level talks with her UAE counterpart.
The Modi Government had approached Dubai authorities in early 2015, demanding the deportation of Michel, who was the main middleman accused of bribing top Congress leadership for the controversial purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters from Italian firm AgustaWestland.
Michel entered into conspiracy with co-accused, including public servants, by altering the tender guidelines and downgrading service ceiling from 6,000 metres to 4,500 metres. Service ceiling denotes the operational height at which a helicopter can operate.
During the trial court proceedings in Italy, the prosecution produced documents and communications between Michel and his partner Guido Haschke and alleged that Michel paid around Rs 400 crore as a bribe to senior politicians and Indian Air Force officials in the Rs 3,600 crore deal.
The communications showed Michel claiming to Haschke that he (Michel) shared proximity with then Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her political secretary Ahmed Patel, who is named in the communication as AP.
The pictures of both leaders were shown to Haschke during the trial by Italian prosecutors and he confirmed that Michel was handling these politicians where as he himself (Haschke) was handling officials in Defence Ministry and Indian Air Force through agents.
The communication between Michel and Haschke showed that five per cent of the deal value was to be shared with “The Family”. In another communication, Michel said that the deal was through as “Sonia Gandhi had communicated to Government that she will not at all fly in old Mi-8 helicopters.”
Congress leaders alleged that Modi had made deals with foreign leaders to make Michel as approver to implicate top Congress leadership. After the scam broke out in late 2012, British citizen Michel fled to Dubai to escape from the Italian investigators. Two years ago, Michel came in front of the media and gave a series of interviews accusing the Modi Government for targeting him for the political gains.
According to CBI, Christian Michel is a historical consultant of AgustaWestland Helicopters with technical and operational knowledge of the aircraft. Michel worked with Westland Helicopters, UK since 1980. Michel’s father, late Wolfgang Michel, too had been consultant for AgustaWestland. Wolfgang was blacklisted by MoD and then his son took over his father’s role.
Michel was a frequent visitor to India and was operating as middleman for defence procurements through a wide network of sources in Indian Air Force (IAF) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) at different levels, including retired and serving IAS officers. He was tracking the movement of procurement process files and was sending periodical reports and dispatches on the developments on the accused persons in the case. He used to transmit the details through fax and other means to his counterparts sitting in Italy and Switzerland.
Wolfgang promoted three companies — Entra Corporation, UCM International Trading Limited and Ferro Imports Ltd. Entra Corp earned two million Euros from India.
Dubai police arrested Michel in February 2017 at the behest of Interpol notice against him issued on a request from the CBI and the ED.