New Delhi: In yet another sensational revelation in the AgustaWestland scam, it has come to light that a firm which had just one employee was purportedly used to route kickbacks of nearly Rs 160 crore.
According to a report in Times of India, the information was revealed in the chargesheet that was submitted in a Milan court on April 4. The amount was paid to government officials in India, politicians and middlemen in the deal, it said.
The report mentioned that the bribe money was routed through a Mohali based company. The Italian company AgustaWestland had allegedly signed a contract with IDS Tunisia, which is a subsidiary of IDS Infotech, for delivering software.
The Enforcement Directorate is already probing the role of IDS Tunisia in the scam. Interestingly this subsidiary had just one employee. The ED during its probe learnt that IDS Tunisia was set up with an intention of routing the money. A chargesheet filed in Italy states that the contract mode was peculiar in nature.
One of the contract's conditions was a monthly payment of 510,000 euros or Rs 3.14 crore irrespective of the software billings in 2008. The orders were shown as designs of the fuselage of the chopper models - AW129 and AW139.
The report said that one Kamoun Hedi was made director of IDS Tunisia. The Italian investigators had pointed out that it had no other employee apart from one Garavagalia Attilio, who worked as Hedi's secretary.
Hedi, however, told the investigators that he had nothing to do with IDS Infotech director-cum-owner Pratap Aggarwal and Delhi-based lawyer Gautam Khaitan "except rubber-stamping and sending delivery reports on IDS letterhead to AgustaWestland".
The TOI report mentioned that when searches were conducted on April 23, 2012, documents from Hedi showed he had made payments to the various parties involved.
The CBI had on March 13, 2013, booked former IAF chief SP Tyagi and 12 others under charges of bribery, cheating and corruption in the VVIP chopper deal. Tyagi, his cousins Sanjeev alias Julie, Rajeev alias Docsa, and Sandeep, European middlemen Carlo Gerosa, Christian Michel and Guido Haschke are among 13 individuals who have been named in the FIR.
Six companies including Italy-based Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland, Mohali-based IDS Infotech, Chandigarh based Aeromatrix, IDS Tunisia and IDS Mauritius had also been booked by the CBI in its FIR.
