After nearly a fortnight of taking up a preliminary investigation, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday has registered a case against the former Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal (Retired) S.P. Tyagi, and 12 others for the alleged bribery scandal while procuring 12 VVIP helicopters.
According to media reports, Tyagi is the first Chief of Air Force nailed by the investigative agency. However, Business Line could not verify the information independently.
The investigative agency has also booked four private persons, related to Tyagi, in the alleged over Rs 3,600-crore scam. These include Sanjeev Tyagi, Rajeev Tyagi, Sandeep Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan.
The agency has quizzed all these persons and also procured documents from Italy and the Defence Ministry before booking them.
All these persons and four companies have been booked under different sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. The companies include Italy’s Finmeccanica, UK’s AgustaWestland and India’s IDS Infotech and Aeromatrix.
More than 10 teams of CBI raided residences and office premises in 14 places including Delhi, Gurgaon, Chandigarh and Mohali.
Others named in the case by CBI include Praveen Bakshi, then chief executive of Aeromatrix Info Solution; Satish Bagrodia, then Chairman of IDS Infotech; Partap K. Aggarwal, then MD of the same firm; Giuseppe Orsi, chief executive of Finmeccanica and Bruno Spagnolini, chief executive of AgustaWestland, among others.
According to CBI, Guido Ralph Haschke, Carlo Valentino Ferdinando Gerosa and Christian Michel acted as middle men for the deal.
It is further alleged that in the procurement process of the helicopters, some persons acted as middlemen and have allegedly influenced the deal in favour of the UK-based company.
It is also alleged that the Italy-based company paid commission in terms of several millions of euros to the middlemen. The middlemen from their share of commission allegedly paid huge sums of money to some Indian nationals in the garb of engineering contracts with two India-based companies.