VVIP Chopper scam: 5 specific allegations Subramanian Swamy made against 'You-Know-Who'

BJP's Rajya Sabha MP Subramanian Swamy again fired salvos in the upper house of the Parliament as he laid out the allegations against Congress in the Rs 3700 crore VVIP chopper deal. Swamy alleged that the Congress-led UPA had effectively eliminated all other players so that the deal could be facilitated for AgustaWestland. The RS witnessed another ruckus when Swamy claimed that AP mentioned in the Italian court order referred to Congress MP Ahmad Patel who received a Rs 125 crore bribe on behalf of ‘You-Know-Who’ referring to Congress President Sonia Gandhi. He added that he respected former PM Manmohan Singh but felt that he took orders very easily.

The Congress took objection to his remarks and insisted that the documents he had quoted from should be authenticated.

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Here's what Subramanian Swamy said in Parliament: 

1) The international norm for cabin height was changed from 1.45m to 1.80m and no other helicopter came under those specifications which eliminated the competition (since Agusta Westland only made helicopters with those specifications). He added that he’d ask the government to charge those responsible under the prevention of corruption act.

2) He added that instead of conducting field tests on the aircraft that was going to be used, field tests were carried out on another aircraft in Italy, which according to him amounted to fraud under Section 420 of the IPC.  

3) The original proposal was to buy eight helicopters and when it became clear that AgustaWestland was the company involved, they ordered four more. The CAG said that the present 8 copters were hardly utilised and the government had paid an additional amount of Rs 1200 crore for the extra four.

4) He then alleged that in Jan 2006, the Air Force gave Rs 793 crore as the benchmark estimate but in September 2008, the price negotiation committee fixed the price at Rs 4877.5 crore, which was six times the original price. He added that former Defence Minister AK Anthony had put his signature in the file and wondered what authority had directed him to do it.

5) He claimed middleman Christian Michel’s father was connected with several Congress leaders and that a handwritten note by him said that Rs 125 crore was given as a bribe to facilitate the deal and the money was given to AP. This is mentioned in the documents available from the Italian court. He wondered about AP’s identity, and said it the bribe was given to the political secretary and ‘we know whose political secretary he is’, hinting at Sonia Gandhi.

Earlier, former Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) supremo Mayawati said the people of the country want the names of all the political bigwigs involved in the scam to come out in the open, adding that people want stringent punishment for them. "This scam should be monitored by the Supreme Court since politicisation of CBI has been well known to us. The probe should be quick, unbiased and under the supervision of the Supreme Court," she said.

Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Majeed Memon said that the scam has both political and legal fallout. "Unfortunately, we are only concerned about the political fallout. We need to investigate the precise nature of crime and the offenders since it is a very sensitive matter," he said. Communist Party of India (CPI) leader D Raja asked the CBI to come up with a progress report on the VVIP chopper deal.

‘It has been two years since this party came to power. What progress has the CBI made?’’ he asked. Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar told the Rajya Sabha that he only wanted to give the chronology of the events with regard to corruption in the Rs 3,600-crore sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India. "This matter is not of today, this pertains to year 2002. I just wanted to inform the House, the chronological order of events, without any comments on them, so that the House is aware of when it took place and what happened," Parrikar told the Upper House. "Whether they want or don’t want, it is for them (Congress)," he added amid uproar in the upper house. 

Parrikar, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, had earlier on Monday said that his address in the Parliament would include how and when necessary clauses or provisions were relaxed to suit the company.

Former Indian Air Force chief SP Tyagi is being grilled for the third consecutive day by the CBI at its headquarter in connection with alleged irregularities in the Rs 3600 crore VVIP chopper deal. As per reports, the former IAF chief is said to have told the CBI on Tuesday that he met senior officials of Finmeccanica, the parent company of AgustaWestland, while negotiations for the purchase of VVIP choppers were going on. He also told the interrogators that he had met Finmeccanica’s Chief Operating Officer Georgio Zapa in New Delhi on February 15, 2005.

The CBI quizzed the former IAF chief on the four firms which he and his wife set up after his retirement from service. Tyagi, who retired in 2007, has told the CBI that he travelled to Florence, Milan and Venice in Italy in 2008 and 2009 after his retirement. Tyagi has so far rubbished the allegations levelled against him, saying the change in specifications was a collective decision in which senior officers of the IAF, SPG, NSA and other departments were involved.

The former IAF chief’s cousins have also been called for questioning later this week. Tyagi has been accused in Italy and India of helping AgustaWestland win the chopper contract by reducing the flying ceiling of the helicopter from 6,000 metre to 4,500 metre. The CBI registered a case against the former IAF chief along with 13 others, including his cousins and European middlemen, in March 2013. The investigating agency had earlier on Saturday quizzed former IAF deputy chief JS Gujral in connection with this case.