Former Goa PWD minister denies taking bribe from US firm for water project

Churchill Alemao slams Parrikar for pouncing on the opportunity to malign him

Former Goa Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Churchill Alemao said the decision to appoint a consultant for the Goa Water Supply and Sewerage project was not his and that he never met anyone from US consultancy firm Louis Berger.

“Churchill was a minister, not a technician. A minister can’t give consultancy job to anyone. It was not my job. It was the duty of the technical staff to take care of these things,” Alemao said in an interview to Business Standard .

Alemao was the PWD minister between 2007 and 2012, when the Rs 1,031 crore Goa Water Supply and Sewerage project was commissioned under a loan agreement between Indian government and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).

The project, known as ‘JICA project’ locally after the sponsor, is under limelight following a disclosure in US courts that executives of New Jersey-based Louis Berger, one of the consultants to the project, paid close to a dollar million in bribe to officials, including “a minister”.

Assisted by his son Savio at his residence in Novangulli about 30-km from the capital Panaji, Alemao emphasises it was not a finding or a verdict of any court but an allegation, which has been settled by payment of fine.  

“Where is the evidence? Show me the order that says I have taken money,” he asked, adding, “I don’t know who this Louis Berger is. I have not met anyone from this company.”

“The JICA project was in the works much before I became the minister. We only expedited the things. People have benefitted by this,” the former minister added.  

Former Goa chief minister Digambar Kamat also defended his ministers on similar lines.

The Congress leader, who shifted allegiance to the Trinamool Congress after his daughter, Valanka, was denied a Lok Sabha ticket, said he was ready for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe.

On Sunday, both Chief Minister Laxmikanth Parsekar and a Union defence minister had called for the probe into the role of ex-ministers in the bribery issue. Parrikar even went on to say that the bribe money had gone into funding football.

Alemao owns Churchill Brothers, a famous football club, which was in news after one of its players allegedly molested an airhostess on a SpiceJet flight. Alemao’s defence of the incident in his broken English has now become a famous YouTube video.

He used the same broken English to take on bête noire Parrikar. “He got an opportunity. So, he came running all the way to malign me. What is the defence minister doing at a fishing function? He should be dealing with bigger things like guns and rockets,” he said.

Alemao said Parrikar was deliberately using this incident to divert the attention from the failures of the three and a half year old state government in Goa. “He is a man of many U-turns. He came to power alleging that the Congress government was involved in a Rs 35,000 crore mining scam. After he came to power, it became Rs 3,500 crore scam and the government has not even recovered Rs 3.5 crore.”

Alemao pointed out that though he is being blamed for hiring consultant, the BJP government is paying huge sum for consultants in the MOPA airport project.

“When the matter was raised in the assembly last year, Parrikar told that they were paying Rs 17 crore, of which Rs 14 crore has already been paid.”

The two-time Member of Parliament had faced an inquiry by the state Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for alleged irregularities in other water supply projects awarded by the PWD. “All these cases are politically motivated. I didn’t have a single case against me. Everything came after I came to politics.”