Qaisar Mansoor
The AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam is a corruption case where it has been alleged that bribes were paid to “middlemen”, perhaps even politicians, when India agreed to buy 12 AgustaWestland helicopters built by Italian defence manufacturing giant Finmeccanica at an estimated cost of Rs 3,600 crore.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has filed a chargesheet against former Defence Secretary and Comptroller and Auditor General Shashi Kant Sharma and former Air Vice Marshal Jasbir Singh Panesar among others in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland case.
Sharma, who was the joint secretary in the Ministry of Defence when the deal was being discussed, and Panesar are among five government officials against whom the agency has filed the chargesheet.
The others include former deputy chief test pilot SA Kunte, Wing Commander (Retrd) Thomas Mathew and Group Captain (Retrd) N Santosh.
The agency had in March 2020 sought sanction for prosecution against these officials from the government. In September that year, the agency had filed a chargesheet against 14 individuals and entities who were allegedly involved in the deal but had left out Sharma and others for want of sanctions.
During searches in Switzerland, officials had found a note mentioning “JS Air” and also the initials of various people mentioned on it. The note was allegedly prepared by Michel and was called the “budget sheet”. It had also found a mention in the Milan court when the case was going on there.
According to the Milan court order, the note mentioned initials, perhaps denoting designations of officials under various heads of ‘AF’ and ‘Bur’. It is the same note that mentions ‘AP’ under the head of “Pol”. The court order has described these heads as ‘Air Force’, ‘Bureaucrats’ and ‘Politicians’.
Against each head, there were figures in Euros. Against ‘AF’, the figure was Euro 6, while it was Euro 8.4 against ‘Bur’ and Euro 15/16 against ‘Pol’.
Initials mentioned under ‘AF’ included Dch, PDSR, 2FTT and DG Maint. Under the head ‘Bur’, the initials mentioned included DS, JS Air, AFA Air and DG Acq, CVC and Auditor gen.
In the CBI chargesheet issued in September, 2020, the 14 accused included eight individuals and five entities.
The individuals were identified as Rajiv Saxena (whose companies allegedly laundered money on behalf of Christian Michel), Sandeep Tyagi alias Kuki Tyagi (from the family of former IAF chief SP Tyagi); Praveen Bakshi and IDS infotech MD Partap Krishan Aggarwal (who allegedly laundered kickbacks along with Rajiv Saxena); Narendra Kumar Jain and Rajesh Kumar Jain of Kolkata (who allegedly floated shell companies); Sunil Kothari, then Managing Director of OM Metals Infotech Pvt. Ltd; Michel’s close associate and former GM of Westland Support Services Ltd K V Kunhikrishnan; Giacomino Saponaro, then MD of AgustaWestland International Ltd; and Deepak Goyal, who worked with the chargesheeted accused lawyer Gautam Khaitan.
The entities included IDS Infotech Ltd., Chandigarh; Aeromatrix Info Solutions Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; Neel Madhav Consultants Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi (through its Director Sandeep Tyagi); Mainak Agency Pvt. Ltd., (through its Directors Sandeep Tyagi and Sanjeev Tyagi); and Interstellar Technologies Ltd, Mauritius (through its Director Rajiv Saxena).
According to CBI, the deal for which technical requirements were changed to help AgustaWestland qualify had been brokered by defence middleman Christian Michel and two other middlemen Carlo Gerosa and Guido Haschke. While the latter were allegedly “handling” the family of former IAF chief SP Tyagi, Michel was dealing with officials from the Ministry of Defence.
In 1999, the Indian Air Force floated a proposal for the acquisition of 12 VVIP helicopters to ferry top government functionaries. In 2010, the deal was granted to AgustaWestland for over Rs 3,600 crore. This was, however, followed by allegations that technical specifications had been tweaked—including lowering of the service ceiling of the helicopter from 6,000 m to 4,500 m—to help AgustaWestland qualify and win the bid, for which bribes were allegedly paid.
The CBI filed an FIR on March 14, 2013, after a preliminary inquiry. The FIR named former IAF chief S P Tyagi and 12 other individuals as accused, apart from four companies. These individuals included members of the Tyagi family and three middlemen—Michel, Carlo Gerosa and Guido Haschke. The Enforcement Directorate (ED), too, began investigations under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act.
According to the CBI and ED investigations, in the offset category (work to be mandatorily done in India), AgustaWestland set aside 70 million euros to be transferred to companies floated by the alleged middlemen. While Michel set up Global Services FZE in Dubai, Haschke set up IDS Tunisia, IDS Mauritius and Aeromatrix. In various chargesheets, investigators have claimed that Michel was supposed to get 42 million euros and Haschke 28 million euros.
“The real deal was that of the 70 million euros, only 30% would be utilised for actual work including engineering services and media handling while the rest would be diverted to pay bribes,” an investigator said.
The CBI has alleged that Indian officials were paid bribes of Rs 362 crore to swing the deal in favour of the Anglo-Italian firm.
Out of the amount Michel was reportedly about to get, 30 million euros was allegedly meant to be kickbacks. Out of this, 24 million was paid before the deal was cancelled, according to the ED chargesheet.
