Case against Tyagi, 3 of his cousins in copter deal

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New Delhi: The CBI on Monday registered a preliminary enquiry against 11 individuals, including Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi (Retd), former Chief of Air Staff, to probe alleged kickbacks in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland helicopter deal. Italian firm Finmeccanica and its UK subsidiary AgustaWestland were also named in the PE.
CBI sources said agency officials who had returned from Italy with credible documents from Finmeccanica and the public prosecutor there had found enough material to start its probe into the alleged Rs 362-crore payoffs in the helicopter deal. “Now (we) will seek clarifications from all those named in the PE”, a source said.
Among those named in the PE are three cousins of Air Chief Marshal Tyagi — Juli, Dosca and Sandeep — as well as Gautam Khaitan, Pravin Bakshi, Guisseppe Orsi, Bruno Spagnolini, Guido Haschke, Carlo Gerosa and Christian Michel. Four firms, including Chandigarh-based IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, have also been named in the PE.
The CBI plans to issue “lookout notices” — a restraint order restraining people from leaving the country — against those named in the PE, the sources added.
The agency will also scrutinise call details of all Indians who have been named in the PE, they said. This is the second instance when a former services chief has been named in a CBI inquiry. Former Admiral Sushil Kumar was named in a CBI case to probe alleged kickback in purchase of Barak missiles in early 2000.
CBI to investigate role of middlemen
Following the CBI on Monday registering a preliminary enquiry against 11 individuals to probe alleged kickbacks in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland helicopter deal, sources said, “The agency will investigate allegations that some middlemen influenced the deal in favour of the Italian company. There are reports that Italian company Finmeccanica paid a commission of seven million Euros to the middlemen out of which huge sums were transferred to seven Indian nationals through Tunisia and Mauritius.”
The money was sent in the garb of engineering contracts with two Indian companies— IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix, sources said adding that the CBI is also taking assistance of the ED in this regard.
In 2010, India had inked the Rs 3,600 crore deal to acquire the 12 three-engine AW-101 helicopters from AgustaWestland for IAF’s elite Communication Squadron, which ferries the President, PM and other VVIPs. There are allegations that certain specifications in the contract were changed during Air chief marshal SP Tyagi’s tenure as the IAF chief. And Italian probe has also talked about Tyagi’s meeting with middleman Gerosa Carlo.