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Also named in the PE are three of his cousins -" Sanjiv Kumar (Julie) Tyagi, Dosca Tyagi and Sandip Tyagi -" and former director of Aeromatrix, Gautam Khaitan, and Pravin Bakshi, chief executive officer of Aeromatrix.
The Indian Air Force had signed a 560 million ($735 million) deal for delivery of 12 high security AgustaWestland helicopters for use by top government leaders. The contract was concluded in February 2010.
Aeromatrix, based in Chandigarh, is one of the companies charged with being a front for the routing of bribes paid by AgustaWestland to win the deal. The three Tyagi cousins are charged with being among the middlemen in the bribery operation. Italian investigators say about Rs 400 crore of bribes were paid to Indians to win the deal; the retired air chief is under suspicion in this regard. He has denied all the charges.
In all, the CBI has named 11 persons. These include Giuseppe Orsi, chief of Finmeccanica, the copter division of Agusta Westland, arrested by the Italian police earlier this month. It has also named four companies -- Aeromatrix, IDS Infotech, AgustaWestland and Finmeccanica.
CBI is investigating kickbacks of "millions of euros" allegedly given to middlemen in the 101 VVIP helicopter deal. The agency is toeing a similar line of enquiry as its Italian counterpart, probing the possibility that the bribe money was routed through Aeromatrix.
The PE also mentions the names of Italian-American consultant Guido Ralph Haschke and Carlos Gerosa, also believed to have acted as key middlemen. Besides Haschke, CBI has named AgustaWestland's chief executive, Bruno Spagnolini.
Says the CBI: "...Two middlemen from their share of commission allegedly paid huge sums of money to several Indian nationals through the Tunisia and Mauritius route, in the garb of engineering contracts with two India-based companies...The two middlemen are directors in (an) India-based private company, in which one private person works as chief operating officer and he allegedly has a role in channelising money for illegal purposes."
The PE has been based on documents it got after a team recently visited Italy for gathering evidence. Two CBI officials and one from the defence ministry returned here on Saturday after a five-day trip. The officials met the prosecutors in this case, now under trial in an Italian court. CBI also met Finmeccanica officials, who agreed to share the findings of its internal probe. CBI had decided to go to Italy after deciding that the information provided by the defence ministry was not sufficient to register a formal enquiry.
The PE could go on for about three months. CBI will have to establish a money trail linking the suspects to the kickbacks received from the Italian firm.
If it is able to get enough incriminating evidence, it will register a First Information Report. This would authorise it to conduct raids and other searches to gather more evidence.
CBI will now start questioning all those linked to the deal, including the former air chief and defence ministry officials. Tyagi's name had surfaced in the preliminary enquiry report filed by Italian investigators in the case.
