Swiss company got C'Wealth Games contracts without solvency certificate, says CBI

The CBI has found a glaring discrepancy in the award of two Commonwealth Games (CWG) contracts to a Swiss firm.

In documents accessed by DNA, the agency claims Games organising committee director-general VK Verma favoured M/s Nussli Limited in awarding overlays contracts worth Rs141 crore.

The CBI says the contracts were granted arbitrarily to the Swiss company without  necessary documents and flouting all norms. Interestingly, Nussli Limited was registered in India in December 2009, when the organising committee invited tenders for overlays.

In an FIR registered on January 5, the agency suspects “criminal conspiracy” involving organising committee officials and consortiums that won the Rs630.23-crore overlays contracts.

The winning firms include Nussli, ESAJV D Art Indo Consortium, GL Events-Meroform (France) and PICO Deepali Overlays (Delhi). The CBI has dug out records of these companies.

Sources said Swiss firm Nussli did not have a solvency certificate at the time of bidding. The certificate confirms a company’s assets exceed its liabilities. Solvency also refers to a company’s ability to meet its long-term obligations. The certificate is issued by a company’s bank and its auditors or directors. Submitting a solvency certificate is mandatory in a global tendering process.

“Ideally, the company [Nussli] should have been disqualified in the absence of such an important document. But it bagged contracts worth Rs141 crore. The organising committee headed by Congress MP Suresh Kalmadi took arbitrary decisions to favour this company, which was registered in the same month when overlays tenders were invited,’’ a senior CBI official close to the probe said.

“The technical evaluation committee (TEC) which verified the bids observed on February 19, 2010, that the requisite solvency certificate was not available for Nussli. TEC, accordingly, recommended that a clarification with regard to solvency certificates should be sought from the bidders,” CBI documents say.

“However, VK Verma, overruled the TEC recommendation and thereby fraudulently allowed Nussli’s bid,” the agency says.