New Delhi: The Italian probe report into the AgustaWestland chopper deal has explained how the kickback money in the deal reached the cousins of former Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi. According to the report accessed by CNN-IBN, Haschke, the key middleman, contacted Juli Tyagi through other accused Garosa.
Haschke further said in his statement that he met SP Tyagi alongwith his cousins and took other AgustaWestland representatives Zappa and Ciampi for the meeting. The meeting took place in February 2005, just when SP Tyagi had taken charge as chief of Air Force.
A total of four lakh euros were sent through Haschke and Garosa for mediation in India and advocate Khaitan was the person responsible for transferring of funds to the Tyagi family. The report further said that money exchanged hands in India and Italian cities of Lugano and Cascina Costa. However, Khaitan issued a statement saying he was not involved in the deal. "I am not involved in this deal. I have not helped these people," he said.
Here are some excerpts from the probe report which deals with statement given by an accused named as ADR:
"I told Engineer ORSI that the relations which I had with the TYAGI family were very strong and that because of this, the Air Chief Marshal had met Mr. ZAPPA. At that time, there was only the 'Request for information', I, in repeated meetings, that this would be almost certainly a tender and I, through my important contacts in India, would have worked to get it awarded to Agusta. Already in the TYAGI-AIR CHIEF TYAGI meeting, one of the topics was that of the limit of 18,000 feet of altitude which excluded particularly all competitors except for the French company 'eurocopter' which anyway did not have a VIP model available."
14/02/13 Bhupendra Chaubey/CNN-IBN
