UPA govt did everything to help Agusta: Parrikar

New Delhi, May 6

Mounting attack on the Congress, the Central Government on Friday said the previous UPA government had “done everything” to help AgustaWestland bag the VVIP chopper contract and asserted that it would track down the main beneficiaries of the kickbacks in the deal.

In a hard-hitting speech in the Lok Sabha, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said the “entire corruption” in the deal took place during the UPA tenure but former Air chief S.P. Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan are “small people” who “simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)” and that the government will “find out where the river was going”.

He said while the decision on the contract was taken in 2010, Tyagi had retired in 2007 and “might have got just a ‘chiller’ (loose change)”.

Amid a walkout by the Congress, which was pressing for a Supreme Court-monitored probe, he said the CBI is “very seriously” investigating the case.

“I hope members are satisfied and they will support the government in finding the truth. The truth may lead to many unwanted realism. What we could not do in Bofors, may be we will do it in AgustaWestland,” Parrikar said while replying to a debate on the Calling Attention Motion during which he continuously targeted the Congress but deliberately refrained from naming anybody.

He said the UPA government had “done everything” to help AgustaWestland bag the Rs 3,600 crore deal for purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters and that its action against the company following the disclosure of corruption was not pro-active but “forced by circumstances”.

He asserted that the government will recover damages to the tune of 398 million euros as well as the “bribe”.

Referring to the Italian court’s recent judgment, Parrikar said with this, the criminal conspiracy has been established and “we will get the documents very fast”.

Alleging that the Congress had close links with Christian Michel, the middleman in the deal, he said the contract was given to a company which had not even participated in the tendering process.

Finding loopholes in the deal, the Defence Minister said the tender was submitted by Italy-based AgustaWestland but the contract was given to the UK-based Agusta Westland International Ltd (AWIL), which was not Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM).

“I am shocked, how could you accept order from a company who has not given tender? They lost sense of proportion. They thought they will be in power for ever. The smell and sight of Euro was so attractive, so intoxicating that they forgot everything. They should take consultation from Michel on how to cover up and how to do white wash,” he said taking a dig at the Congress.

As the Congress created uproar and tried to disrupt his speech, he remarked, “Why are you (Congress) concerned? I have not named anybody. You seem to know where the ganga was going.”

“An investigation is underway with regard to those who washed hands in the flowing ganga. Those who wash hands in the ganga have an idea about temperature of the water, how fast the water is flowing. Based on that, we are assessing whether water was cold or hot, whether the water had Hindi, English, Italian or German and what was the issue,” Parrikar said.

Refusing to spell out what the CBI probe had revealed, the Defence Minister told the House, “I can assure you that I will not disappoint you.”

He said he has already started personally “monitoring” the probe even though the CBI and ED are not under him.

“I am personally taking interest into the sequence of events,” he said.

When CPI(M) member Mohd Saleem questioned how he could “monitor” the CBI and whether it was not affecting its independence, the minister amended his version to say that he was not telling the CBI what to do but only “trying to find out what they are doing” and “monitoring its progress” to check if they are doing something.

He asserted that it was within his right as otherwise he would not be able to inform the House about the progress of the probe.

Parrikar, while giving details of the case, said the decision to prescribe higher cabin height of 1.8 metres of the helicopter was taken by the UPA government on May 9, 2005, and to buttress his point, he placed on the table of the House the minutes of the meeting that was chaired by the then NSA M.K. Narayanan.

Noting that the scam surfaced in 2012, the Defence Minister said nothing was done by the then UPA government till January 2014.

Describing the then Defence Minister AK Antony as “bechara” (helpless), Parrikar contended that his “hands were tied” and he took no action as he “feared that his sainthood would be disrobed”.

He said Antony acted only after a top official of Finmeccanica, the parent company of AgustaWestland, was arrested in Italy in connection with bribery in the deal.

Soon after the arrest, Antony gave the files to CBI in 2-3 hours, he said, adding “He (Antony) wanted to protect his image.... Whether he knew or didn’t know, I don’t know.” Responding to Congress contention that the Italian judge had said that there was no evidence against Sonia Gandhi, Parrikar said it was half-truth as the judge had said that it was for India to investigate and for its investigating agencies to “prove the guilt of people who are suspected”.

With regard to the Congress charge that the Modi government had allowed an AgustaWestland affiliate to participate in another tender despite the company being blacklisted, the Defence Minister said the firm had only put on website its Request for Information (RFI) which anybody can do in a digital world.

“Any person who wants can put his own information there.

“Now it is on open Interent and if anyone wants to put information, whether it is (Congress leader) Jyotiraditya Scindia, or Christian Michel or Agusta Westland, we cannot stop him,” he said.

He then took a dig at the Congress, saying they seemed to know every action of AgustaWestland. He said he was not aware that the company had uploaded something on the website and he looked for it only after the Congress raised the issue.

“So on RFI, if someone has put it, I didn’t know. It came to my notice, when these people (Congress) raised it. So with these (company) people, how much close relation they share, it comes to our mind. I didn’t know about it that they have loaded information on RFI,” Parrikar said.

Suggesting conspiracy to eliminate evidence in the deal, he referred to a “mysterious” fire incident on July 3, 2014, in the Air Force headquarters here and said he would be asking the CBI to probe that.

He said all files were burnt in that fire but luckily three files related to the AgustaWestland deal were saved as those had been kept by an official in his locked drawer.

“If it was in somebody’s mind to set it on fire, we think that failed as the official who was there because the Agusta issue was sensitive. He had locked the files in his drawer. So three files were saved and the three files related to AW-101 helicopters,” the Defence Minister said. — PTI