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VIP chopper scam: Government finally swings into action, CBI team to visit Italy within a week

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New Delhi, February 16, 2013- The CBI’s investigation into the helicopter scam has kicked off with confusion over where to start as the entire case is based on the Italian probe to which the Indian governmenthas no access.

A defence ministry team briefed theCBI brass on Friday at the agency’s headquarters about the procurement process where specific details on the helicopter deal were presented. In the meantime, a CBI team is being dispatched to Italy next week to try and get to the bottom of the 51 million Euro (Rs.362 crore) alleged payoff.

Starting point

chopperdeal01_660_021613084246Sources said the Chandigarh-based Aeromatrix Ltd, the IT firm with business ties to Italian arms company Finmeccanica, would be the starting point as it is the only Indian entity directly linked with the key players in the scam – alleged middlemen Guido Haschke and his partner Carlo Gerosa.

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The CBI is still indecisive if it can file a preliminary enquiry (PE) or a regular complaint (RC), FIR in common parlance.

“We will file a case soon since it has been decided to send a team to Italy. We can only get access to all the documents related to the case if a formal case is registered,” a CBI officer said.

The agency is also examining options of questioning the main accused in the case, Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi, who has been arrested by Italian authorities for allegedly paying bribes to Indian officials to swing the AgustaWestland helicopter deal.

Sources say unless he is grilled the probe cannot move forward as the CBI will have to investigate the money trail.

Extradition

“We will have to find out who are the officials who were bribed,” the officer added.

The agency at a later stage will also look at the possibility of Orsi’s extradition.

The two software companies mentioned in the report filed by Italian investigators in a Milan court – IDS Tunisia and IDS India – through which slush funds were routed, also appeared to be fake.

In fact, Haschke and Gerosa, the alleged middlemen named in the bribery case filed in the Italian court, appeared to have used the name of Mohali and Chandigarh-based IT company IDS Infotech to generate fake invoices to channel the bribes paid to the Tyagi brothers in the helicopter deal.

Aeromatrix, the company run by arms dealers Haschke and Gerosa, had been hived off IDS Infotech, which was earlier doing some BPO work for AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of Italian defence giant Finmeccanica.

Aeromatrix now almost exclusively works for AgustaWestland as over 90 per cent of its revenue comes from the UK-based helicopter company.

Interestingly, the holding company for Aeromatrix is registered in Mauritius and called Info Design Systems Ltd, or IDS in short.

An HR manager at IDS Infotech confirmed to Mail Today that Aeromatrix CEO Praveen Bakshi and several other employees of the company were earlier on the payroll of IDS Infotech.

“However, now they work for Aeromatrix and do not have any link with the earlier company,” he maintained.

Other IDS Infotech employees were tightlipped on the issue and refused to confirm or deny whether the company had operations in Tunisia.

IDS Infotech has acquired an IT company in the UK and also has a subsidiary in the US and the Netherlands. In India, the firm has offices in Mohali, Chandigarh and Noida. According to the data put out by the company on the Indiamart website, it has a turnover of anything betweenRs.40 crore to Rs.100 crore.

According to sources, the CBI will now have to examine whether the turnover of the company matches the bigger payments that have come in from AgustaWestland when the helicopter deal was being struck.

INDIA TODAY