SCAMTASTIC

Scam, scam and more scams. That seems to be the only gift the nine year long UPA government has given to the common people of India. The most recent one is the alleged corruption in the agreement done with Helicopter manufacturing company Augusta Westland of Great Britain.

India’s Ministry Of Defence had signed the final contract for the supply of 12 AW-101 helicopters with AgustaWestland,  on February 8, 2010. These helicopters were supposed to be used to service the VVIPs in India. The deal was made for 12 AW-101 helicopters at a cost of Rupees 3546 crores approx. with Augusta Westland, which is the UK based subsidiary of Italian consortium Finmeccanica.

Interesting thing to note here is the scandal was not unearthed either by Indian or British authorities but it was an indirect revelation that happened when the Italian police arrested the head of Italian state-controlled defence group Finmeccanica on bribery charges. Giuseppe Orsi, CEO of Finmeccanica came under scanner in a corruption probe into the helicopter sales to Indian government.  The Italian authorities have quickly got into action and put the Chief executive of Augusta Westland, Bruno Spagnolini under house arrest until further probe is conducted. However in the meanwhile after signing a deal of such enormity, the Indian Govt. had been sleeping all the while. With prospects of a second Bofors like scandal, Congress is under pressure to prove its innocence and thus has by and large decided to cancel the agreement. It has also sent its chief secretary and a team of CBI to Italy to find more information about the case. Although the team is in Italy since more than a week, it has done little as not much has been given away by the Italian authorities. However Indian CBI has appointed an lawyer to represent the Government in the Italian court.

The main culprit seems here seems to be middlemen Christen Michel and Guido Haschel who among them have received kickbacks of about 50 million Euros. According to Italian court documents, Global Trade & Commerce Ltd, a UK-based company controlled by Michel, had planned to show a purchase of 14 WG30 helicopters from Pawan Hans to justify the payment of over 18 million euros to his company by AgustaWestland as kickbacks. It is possible that AgustaWestland may have formally appointed Global Trade & Commerce as the official representative to buy the obsolete helicopters and Michel may have been given exaggerated payments for it. This way, kickbacks would have been paid off from AgustaWestland to Michel's firm.

The other way adopted by AgustaWestland to pay money to Guido Haschke was to create non-existent software contracts with IDS India and route money through Tunisia and Mauritius into India.

Anyway, the real story can only be found out after the whole investigation is done but to think that such blatant lobbying exists in the Ministry of Defence and on such high level deals is a threat to the economy as well as the security of the nation. It isn’t even clear weather the helicopters that are being brought are checked for proper standards of performance and safety or not. This proves that the scale of corruption in Inda is getting larger and larger with each passing day.