BJP, CONGRESS RAKE UP SCAMS AHEAD OF POLLS
Amidst the Assembly polls for various states and the Lok Sabha polls scheduled next year, the main political parties in the country are trying to beat their rivals by tarnishing their image levelling allegations of involvement in multi- crore scams. While the Congress is crying hoarse about the BJP benefiting from the ` 58,000- crore Rafale deal, the BJP is trying to corner its rival citing the ` 3,600- crore AgustaWestland case.
Further, the Modi government recently got Christian Michel, a British national who brokered the VVIP chopper deal, extradited from the UAE.
Michel is wanted for money laundering, bribery, and fraud in connection with the AgustaWestland deal and is expected to help investigating agencies collect more details and provide more ammunition to the BJPled NDA government against the Congress.
THE BEGINNING
In August 1999, the IAF found the need to replace the Russian Mi- 8 choppers used to carry VVIPs as they were not able to operate safely at night and in places situated above 2,000- metres elevation.
The IAF insisted the need for choppers that can fly at high altitudes like Siachen and Tiger Hill and also that the height of the chopper’s cabin should be increased beyond 1.39 metres.
AgustaWestland along with five other companies participated in the bidding process, but it’s A- 101 chopper could not meet the requirement to fly at 6,000- metres.
Sikorsky was another company that qualified for the deal.
However, after S. P. Tyagi became the chief of the IAF, it is alleged that the technical specifications were tweaked, lowering the service ceiling to 4,500 metres and increasing the cabin height to 1.80 metres, allowing AgustaWestland to enter the bidding process again.
It was in 2010 that the Congress- led UPA government signed a deal with UK- based AgustaWestland to purchase 12 AW 101 choppers for ` 3,600 crore.
In 2012, the first chopper arrived in India and two more arrived later, all of which are still at Delhi’s Palam airport.
Trouble brewed in February, 2013, when the chairman of Finmeccanica, the parent company of Agustawestland,
Giuseppe Orsi and AgustaWestland CEO Bruno Spadnolini were arrested on charges that they offered money to the middlemen to clinch the deal.
Michel is one of the three middlemen being probed in the case, along with Guido Ralph Haschke and his partner Carlos Gerosa.
AgustaWestland’s former chief executive Giuseppe Orsi hired Haschke, then a consultant for the Finmeccanica group, to lead dealings in India to secure the VVIP choppers contract. Further, Michel also wrote a note to AgustaWestland to focus on Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh as they are the deciding authorities. Bruno Spagnolini — then CEO of AgustaWestland, and ex Finmeccanica chief Giuseppe Orsi, were convicted by an Italian court but a Milan court acquitted them for want of evidence. Congress president Sonia, her political secretary Ahmed Patel, former president Pranab Mukherjee, party leaders M. Veerappa Moily, Oscar Fernandes, M. K. Narayanan, Vinay Singh are allegedly involved in the scam.