AgustaWestland scam: SC wants Saxena’s relatives to guarantee his return

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday indicated allowing Rajeev Saxena — an approver in an AgustaWestland chopper scam related money laundering case — to travel abroad for medical treatment if his relatives were ready to furnish two sureties of Rs five crore each for his return.

File photo of the Supreme Court.

Tribune News Service
New Delhi, June 25

The Supreme Court on Tuesday indicated allowing Rajeev Saxena — an approver in an AgustaWestland chopper scam related money laundering case — to travel abroad for medical treatment if his relatives were ready to furnish two sureties of Rs five crore each for his return.

As a Vacation Bench headed by Justice Sanjiv Khanna asked senior counsel Meenakshi Arora—representing Saxena—to inform it by Wednesday if his sister and sister-in-law were willing to furnish sureties of Rs five crore each as guarantee that he would return to face trial, the Enforcement Directorate vehemently opposed it.

The ED – which has challenged the Delhi High Court’s June 10 order allowing Saxena to travel abroad for treatment of blood cancer and other ailments – submitted that he had no roots in India and he might not come back if allowed to leave the country.

“Your apprehensions may be right or wrong, but are you (government) powerless to get him back? We understand your apprehensions. His (Saxena’s) passport is for limited period,” the Bench commented and asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta to suggest other conditions which could be imposed on Saxena for his travel abroad.

“No country will say that it is powerless,” responded Mehta, who is representing the ED.

He insisted that treatment for Saxena’s ailments was available in India and that he was not only disclosing his role in this money laundering case, but also revealing the culpability of others.

A director of two Dubai-based firms—UHY Saxena and Matrix Holdings—Saxena was one of the accused named in the charge sheet filed by the ED in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland scam who later turned an approver.

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) security agencies had picked him up from his Dubai residence on January 30 and extradited him to India.

In its June 10 order, the high court had said he had already been granted bail on medical grounds, before being pardoned and made an approver.

Noting that he was suffering from various medical ailments, the high court had allowed him to go to Dubai, the UK and certain other European countries for medical treatment for a month between June 25 and July 24, 2019.

The high court had dismissed the ED’s plea against the trial court’s June 1 order permitting Saxena to travel abroad.