Choppergate and beyond…
More often than not, lesser pain appears to vanish when you experience
more excruciating new suffering. In the current political context the Union
Government is benefitted from the terrible cycle of terror unleashed by Islamic
terrorists wreaking vengeance for their brother hung on the gallows for the
heinous attack on Indian parliament. News hawks tearing the government for yet
another corruption in the purchase of a squadron of VVIP helicopters from Italy
have shifted their attention to the horrendous story of Bomb blasts in Hyderabad.
The news media has done this before: they had almost abandoned the humongous 2G
and Coalgate scams involving corruption sucking billions of rupees from the
nation’s coffers to go after a newer scam which involved only $556 million.
While I regret the expression, the Hyderabad blasts are a Godsend to the UPA
government in the sense the human calamity will be less one-sided as a target
of attack on it. For all you know, the news media will not even do the
follow-up stories on the corruption issues
as long as they have a surfeit of morbid stories on the human calamities
following the serial blasts over two days, and God forbid, yet to come.
I am on the choppergate now and wish to do some probing, even
as the Prime Minister, his cabinet colleagues and Congress party spokespersons take
pains to explain that the Agusta Westland investigation as a time-consuming and
almost hopeless pursuit. Some have already blamed for Defence Minister AK
Antony for moving to scrap the copter deal, without consulting the Cabinet
Committee on Security, and the PMO. News is leaking that Italy has refused to
cooperate because their “judicial process is going on”. I was just wondering
whether it is not in the interest of this Union government that Italy refuses
to cooperate for ever on this issue. Was anybody like Madhav Singh Solanki was
sent with a note to the Italian authorities not to cooperate with the CBI as was
done in the case of the Bofors scam? Why this sudden offer for a JPC? Who does
not know what happens when a JPC with a majority of members from the UPA and
their allies sit in judgement when the Government machinery is the accused?
This is particularly relevant when we know that the CBI probe
into the Coalgate scam involving Rs.1.86lakh crores is stalled Coal Ministry, (still
under the PM?) is not delivering files asked for by the investigative agency.
This is what Ranjit Sinha tells the Parliament’s Accounts Committee (PAC).
Meanwhile the CBI’s Senior Public Prosecutor was caught on tape helping the key
accused, CEO Sanjay Chandra of Unitech, boasting about “muddling the matters”
wherever possible, coaching him and guiding him how to counter CBI legal moves.
A newspaper close to the Government reported all of a sudden
on 19th February that the Union Government indeed had smelt a rat
“months ago” and “petitioned Rome 6 times over the chopper deal, something
which not even the Ministry of Defence press release a few days earlier had mentioned!
Another newspaper had a front-page report of Minister for External Affairs
Salman Khurshid opposing the scrapping of the Agusta Westland copter lead, for
the purported reason of such a decision affecting the “defence preparedness of
the country”! Who is he to worry about defence preparedness more than the Defence
Minister himself? There are indeed many
others who spread the story that cancellation of the copter deal by Defence
Minister will be a “big set back” to the IAF. They forget that the VVIP
helicopters are not essential weaponry for the defence forces. There must be a
lot of heartburn in New Delhi’s corruption circuit because the Finmeccanica and
their agents have in the pipeline some $8 billion (Rs.44000Cr) worth Indian
contracts which they might lose if AK Antony has his way!
It was in 2010 that Government of India decided to purchase 12
Agusta Westland AW101 helicopters for ferrying around the Prez, the PM and
other dignitaries at the cost of Rs.3546Cr ($556 million). The helicopters are
manufactured in the Yevil factory in UK. Italian Prosecutors suspect payment of more
than Rs.450Cr to middlemen as bribes and Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi was arrested
on corruption charges. Agusta Chief Bruno Spagnolini is under house arrest. Former
Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi’s relatives, Sandip, Julie and Dosca are named as beneficiaries
by the Italian Prosecutor. The Italian middlemen under arrest assert that they
met Tyagi 6/7 times, including at the Bangalore airshow, and at the offices of
his cousins. Italian investigators suspect and investigative reporters allege
that a kick back of 51 million euros (Rs.350Cr) was paid out directly and some
30 million euros was routed through Christian Michel, a UK-based middleman and
confidant of Orsi, the Finmeccanica CEO.
Meanwhile, it is known that a Chandigarh-based Software firm,
IDS Infotech routed Rs.140Cr bribes in Mother India through a fake-deal in IT
services to Agusta Westland. IDS Infotech does not show up in Ministry of
Corporate Affairs records. The Minister-in-charge may not want to have it on
records, if I were him. The fact is that IDS hived off a subsidiary, Aeromatrix
which had as directors, Guido Ralph Haschke and Carlos Gerosa, a Delhi-based
advocate Gautam Khaitan and one Pravin Bakshi who was also an executive VP in
IDS. Here enters the coal-scam tainted former Union Minister of State, and
Congress leader Santosh Bagrodia’s brother Satish as another director of IDS
Infotech. To create further confusion, there is talk of a lion’s share of the
kick-back going to “the family”. Sounds like the ‘G’ in Bofors scam?
ACM Tyagi distinctly remembers now that he met the middlemen
after retirement! Tyagi also cleverly tried an escape route instigating
Congress-led government to deflect the needle of suspicion to NDA government
and spin a scam out of in the opposite direction saying that the technical
parameters were tweaked to favour Westland by Vajpayee PMO in 2003, though the
tenders were floated in 2006, finalised in 2007 and the deal was inked in 2010
when Pranab Mukherjee was the Defence Minister in the UPA government! Tyagi had
almost succeeded in triggering a major political storm in Delhi, when unfortunately
for him, a day after Tyagi’s above statement, the present Defence Minister
being an honest person, a Defence Ministry press release on 14.2.2013 said that
the tender requirements for the helicopters were “deliberated at length”
between March 2005 and September 2006 before changer in the specifications
made, which fits with the Italian investigator’s claim! A preliminary report of
64 pages filed in the tribunal of Busto Arsizio city after arresting Orsi and
Spagnolini, the Italian investigators have named ACM SP Tyagi (who was IAF
Chief from January 2005 to December 2007) as beneficiary of an undisclosed
amount to be routed through his cousins. Middlemen claim that they met Tyagi in
his office, influenced him to change terms, and the ACM went on briefing them
thereafter on all developments. There seems to be perfect logic and a lot of
circumstantial evidence to assume that ‘the Italians took money, kin route to
air chief’ as a national newspaper’s banner headline said on the front page.
Finmeccanica the holding company of Agusta Westland bagged
the Indian business in February 2010 beating rival US firm Sikorsky, the better-known
manufacturer of military choppers on the ground that Sikorsky machines cannot
reach the “operational ceiling” od 18000 feet; but for clearing Agusta Westland
this was quietly tweaked to 15000 feet, just 500 feet higher than Sikorsky!
A national News TV Channel had broken the news on the kickbacks a year back
following which BJP MP Prakash Javadedkar had written to the Defence Minister
regarding the 51 million euros commission paid to one Guido Ralph Haschke to facilitate
the deal in India. It is very similar to Ottavio Quattrocchi, a Country Manager
of Snam Projetti based in Delhi getting 3% commission for Indian Army’s
purchase of Howitzers made by Bofors of Sweden.
“When the bribe-giver has been caught, why can’t the
bribe-taker be identified?” asks BJP’s Arun Jaitley. Don’t you remember,
Mr.Jaitley, speaking to the CBI officers and anti-corruption establishment of
the country recently, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh had told them that what
was needed was to focus on the ‘Supply side of corruption”. And that side could
be expected not to open up to us! I was astonished as the BJP escaped the
allegation of wrong-doing imputed by former ACM Tyagi, thanks to the Defence
Ministry’s own press release, former BJP Defence Minister Jaswant Singh, the
man who speaks in capital letters, as they say, tried to support ACM (retd) Tyagi
to the extent of holding the view that Brajesh Mishra had the specs changed! Jaswant
Singh however, clarifies that former NSA had taken the decision to avoid a
single-vendor situation. For Jaswant “guilt through association” doesn’t exist
and Tyagi is likely to be innocent! That is not the impression we get from the
investigations in Italy…Perhaps Jaswant Singh has forgotten the example of the
Nandas, the Khannas, and the Choudhries of the past. Would Jaswant benefit of
doubt to former coal minister Santosh Bagrodia too?
Perhaps the Indian defence system fails to plug the holes in
the system despite the series of scandals over defence purchases during the
last three or four decades. Defence Ministers like Jagjivan Ram, Sharad Pawar
and Moolayam Sigh Yadav have been named in controversies over assets and
incomes far exceeding their known sources of income. The “integrity pacts” and
prohibition over engagement of agents and the tall talk of transparency have
been only for the consumption of the gullible public, it appears. It may be
noted that if they have no agents they may employ Managers connected with the
potential customers. US copter firm Sikorsky has Air Vice-Marshal AJS Walia
(retd) as their India and South Asia head. Former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi could
helpfully defended the Indian system (now almost run by his compatriot) with a
statement that “bribes are a phenomenon that exist. It’s useless to deny the
existence of these situations. They are not crimes”. It must be heartening to
the Congress party, and Prime Minister Singh. Had not Indiraji herself said
that corruption was a worldwide phenomenon?
I am deeply worried because the Defence Minister AK
Antony-led Defence Acquisition Council is already sitting on billions of dollars’
worth procurement of arms, ammunitions and planes and helicopters. It appears
197 light utility helicopters (Rs.3000Cr) proposal had a middleman (Brigadier Saini?)
asking Agusta Westland $5 million bribe to swing the deal, this being a joint
Army-IAF procurement plan. Agusta Westland is out of this deal now, but the
Russian Kamov Ka-226T and EurocopterAS550C3 Fennec are in the race. Newsmen
call Antony a “champion blacklister” for having many like the Singapore
Technology Kinetics, Rheinmetall, the German conglomerate, Israel Military
Industries, South African Denel, and altogether some 120 or so defence suppliers
put under the blacklist. It is as if the difficult choice is between safeguarding
the Minister’s personal integrity and the nation’s defence preparedness. St. Antony
is very touchy about issues of corruption, and in the situation, it would be the
Indian armed forces that stand deprived of essential supplies be front-line combat
equipment from fighter aircraft, artillery guns or air defence radars.
Antony’s penchant for black-listing manufacturers, and
cancelling orders which materialised after years of prevarication can throw a
spanner in the works of our much delayed defence purchases even as his
ministry’s claims of an effective ban on middlemen and arms dealers. The
Defence Minister’s preference to technical superiority based on specification
sheets like in the case of the Rs.64500 order for the Rafale fighter aircraft
from Dassault, is equally worrisome. The French fighter aircraft is not known
to have participated in any major war!
