A day after Christian Michel, the alleged middleman in the Rs 3,726-crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal, was extradited to India from Dubai, India Today TV has exclusively accessed a statement he gave to Dubai prosecution authorities.
Christian Michel, 54, told public prosecution authorities in Dubai that he did work in India with the previous UPA government, which was led by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
“I worked in India with the previous government which was led by Manmohan Singh and in the year 2014 as I am mentioning the government was changed which is led by Narendra Modi. I was accused once again due to my involvement with the previous government in the deal of helicopters supply to the defence ministry of India,” Christian Michel told prosecutors.
When the prosecutors accused him of receiving a kickback to the tune of 70 million euros, he stuck to his previous statement.
“I insist on my previous statement made in the investigations of the public prosecution and confirm that the reason for my accusation is that I was working in that deal with the previous government, which was headed by Manmohan Singh,” Michel said.
“Putting me in this case is just to pressurise me to testify against the previous government. The deal was without any kickback of fraud or bribes and I was not working in the company’s branch in India; rather I was working in the company’s UK branch”
An aggressive Michel completely denied his role in the VVIP chopper scam, claiming that his extradition to India would not be legally right. However, he was extradited after courts in the UAE gave the go ahead.
Michel arrived in India last night and will be produced in front of a CBI special court at Patiala House this afternoon.
The AgustaWestland deal scandal is related to the alleged abuse of authoritative power by prominent individuals including former Indian Air Force Chief SP Tyagi, advocate Gautam Khaitan, then IAF Vice Chief JS Gujral and Tyagi’s brother Sanjeev.
An earlier CBI chargesheet highlighted that there were irregularities in the procurement of 12 AW-101 VVIP helicopters from Britain-based AgustaWestland.
Tyagi allegedly took bribes worth several crores, through middlemen and a chain of companies in several countries, from AgustaWestland to change the specifications of the contract, thus reducing the operational flight ceiling of the choppers from 6,000 metres to almost 4,000 metres.
These modifications to the deal helped AgustaWestland to secure the contract for supplying the choppers to India. It remains to be seen whether Indian authorities can extract any more information about the VVIP chopper deal from Michel.
