Government to follow copter money trail

Sharpening the attack on Congress on the AgustaWestland helicopter deal, Union minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha on Saturday said investigators have the ability to find the money trail and the government would pursue the matter for the benefit of citizens.

“These are investigations that our agencies are undertaking and they are very capable,” Mr Sinha said in response to a question on whether the government was confident about proving the money trail to Congress president Sonia Gandhi or if it was just political aggression. “Sleuths of the investigative agencies have the ability to track down and find out what the money trail is. Of course, we will pursue the matter for the benefit of the citizens of the country, wherever the investigation, wherever the evidence may take us,” he said on the sidelines of the Enforcement Directorate Day function here. The ruling BJP has been alleging that top Congress leaders are involved in the helicopter deal.

The VVIP helicopter deal relates to a 2010 decision of the UPA government to buy 12 helicopters from AgustaWestland, a unit of Italian manufacturer Finmeccanica. The CBI had registered a case in 2013 in connection with alleged bribes paid by the firm to Indians to clinch the deal for 12 helicopters to ferry VVIPs, including the President and the Prime Minister. The CBI on Saturday quizzed former IAF deputy chief J.S. Gujral for over eight hours in the case. He will be called again for questioning, sources said, adding that three Tyagi brothers — cousins of former IAF chief S.P. Tyagi — have also been asked to appear before the investigation team next week. The former IAF chief is to appear before the CBI on Monday, they added. The CBI has so far examined over 100 people in connection with the case, including all the accused Indians, and now needs to examine five foreign nationals.

While talking to mediapersons in Dehradun on Saturday, defence minister Manohar Parrikar also said the previous UPA dispensation will have to answer who received the alleged kickbacks in the AgustaWestland helicopter deal. “The moot question is who took the money in the Agusta deal. Those who were at the helm at the time when the deal was struck owe an explanation.” In Thiruvananthapuram, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley said the theory that the company was blacklisted during UPA rule and then taken off the blacklist by the NDA government was a “figment of the imagination”. Mr Jaitley disputed the statement of former defence minister A.K. Antony that the UPA government had blacklisted AgustaWestland and Finmeccanica after the bribe issue come out. Firing a fresh salvo at Mrs Sonia Gandhi over the VVIP helicopter scam, the BJP on Saturday claimed that Mr Antony had objected to relaxations extended to AgustaWestland regarding field trials but was “overridden”, and suggested that the Congress chief was behind it. Party spokesperson G.V.L. Narsimha Rao told a press conference here that Mr Antony had questioned the rationale behind allowing the firm to conduct the field trial of helicopter on its premises abroad, and not in India, an initial condition in the RFP, asking what was the guarantee that the field trials would remain above board.

Hitting back at the BJP for targeting the Congress leadership, Mr A.K. Antony on Saturday dared the Narendra Modi government to take “strong” action against “bribe givers and takers”. Asserting that no names were revealed in the Italian court which convicted former employees of AgustaWestland and Finmeccanica for giving bribes in the deal, he said, “At every stage in the Italian court our lawyer represented the case. They cross-examined all witnesses. At no stage were names revealed. My question is now: CBI is with present government, ED is with present government. Why delay if there is evidence ” he told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram.

Meanwhile, the Congress trashed BJP chief Amit Shah’s charges against Mrs Gandhi and party leaders on the AgustaWestland deal, terming them “deliberate lies”, and demanded that he apologise for his “politics of deceit” and attempts to create a smokescreen to “befool the people”. Addressing a press conference here, Congress chief spokesman Randeep Surjewala posed a number of questions to Mr Shah, who has dubbed AgustaWestland and its parent company Finmeccanica as a “bogus company”. He asked the BJP chief whether he would ask the Modi government why it has been “protecting” the same “bogus company” for the last two years as the CBI and ED investigations have “reached no conclusion”.