Rs 125 cr paid to 'AP': Swamy hints at Sonia Gandhi aide Ahmad Patel in the AgustaWestland case

Ahmad Patel rubbishes Swamy's claim as baseless, asks the government to investigate and prove their case

BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in his maiden speech in the Rajya Sabha laid out 5 allegations in the Rs 3,700 cr VVIP chopper deal. Listing out a chronology of events from 2004, Swamy mentioned that the Congress led UPA government changed norms to eliminate other players and facilitate the deal with Agusta Westland.

The Rajya Sabha witnessed huge ruckus after Swamy indicated that Congress MP Ahmad Patel is the 'AP' mentioned in the Italian court order who received Rs 125 cr as bribe on behalf of Sonia Gandhi. Swamy also said that while he respects former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who will not do anything wrong personally, he takes orders very easily which is his biggest minus point. 

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The Congress party objected strongly to the points made by Swamy and insisted that the documents that he has quoted from should be authenticated and placed in the house. Swamy agreed to authenticate the documents following a order from the Chairman of the house. 

Responding to the allegations, Ahmad Patel challenged the government to subject him to an investigation. He said that if it is proved that he received any bribe in the AgustaWestland deal, he is ready to quit politics. He also rubbished Swamy's claims as baseless. 
 

Following are the 5 allegations made by Swamy against the Congress party in the Agusta Westland deal 

1) The international norm for cabin height for any helicopter is 1.45 metre. But the parameter was changed by the new UPA government to 1.80 metres. There is no other helicopter produced in the world that produces under this parameter. So the process had already started to eliminate other players so that only one helicopter can be purchased. I Will advise the govt that those who are responsible - including minsters and officials be charged under the prevention of corruption act 

2) Field trials should always be conducted on the helicopter you are going to use. The aircraft you are buying has to be subjected to field trials. They chose to have field trials in Italy but why was the testing done on another helicopter. That is amounting to fraud and they are prosecutable under section 420 of the IPC. 

3) The Original proposal was to buy 8 helicopters. Suddenly after it became clear that Agusta Westland is the only one that will qualify, they decided to buy 4 more. CAG said that the present 8 was hardly utilised- only 29% utilisation rate. Why was the additional copters needed? The government spent an additional amount of Rs 1200 cr. 

4) Then the price negotiations started - there is a benchmark estimate. January 2006, the Air Force gave Rs 793 cr as the benchmark rate. But in Sept 2008, price negotiation committee arbitrarly fixed Rs 4877.5 cr, rejecting the Rs 793 cr fixed by the Air Force - six times the original price. The then defence minister Mr Antony put his signature on the file. Which was the authority above him that asked him to do it? 

5) Middleman Christian Michel's father was connected with several Congress leaders. The hand written note by middle men as per the documents available from the Italian court mentions Rs 125 cr was given in the form of bribe to faciliate the deal to AP. Who is this AP? They say it was given to the political secretary. We know whose political secretary he is.