ED for prosecuting money launderers in Embraer deal

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 9

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a prosecution complaint seeking the confiscation of assets worth Rs 16.29 crore as proceeds of crime apart from awarding punishment to the accused persons in a deal involving middlemen in the sale of three planes by Brazil’s Embraer to DRDO.

The agencies are investigating Brazil’s Embraer, a Singapore-based company and two Indians among others in a case relating to kickbacks to an alleged middleman, Vipin Khanna.

The Indian authorities had stumbled on this case of kickbacks of $ 5.76 million (about Rs 45 crore) after American and Brazilian investigating agencies allegedly detected the employment of an agent in facilitating the contract for three Embraer planes to India.

Vipin Khanna is among the three middlemen who were probed by the CBI during the previous UPA government as well. The three were subjected to CBI searches in 2007 for their alleged involvement in the Israeli Barak deal (Suresh Nanda and Vipin Khanna), South African company armaments Denel (Vipin Khanna) and the Israeli Soltam gun upgrade deal (Sudhir Chowdhury).

In this case, the ED has alleged that Embraer paid commission of $ 5.76 million to a Singapore company which routed some of the amount to a Dubai-based subsidiary KRBL of an Indian company which then transferred this money to the country.

Investigation conducted so far has resulted in issuance of a provisional attachment order of proceeds of crime in the form of immovable properties worth Rs 16.29 crore belonging to the KRBL, said the ED.

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