A fugitive and the primary middleman in the AgustaWestland deal, Christian Michel wrote to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, alleging that the Narendra Modi government forced him to name Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, reported India Today.
The Gandhis and the Congress party have been facing the heat back home, ever since an Italian court’s verdict said that the ruling UPA government didn’t do enough to help investigation into the AgustaWestland scam.
Michel’s letter was written about four months before the Italian court’s latest verdict was pronounced. According to the Indian Today report, Michel’s letter reads:
At this time it was made very clear to me through a number of obtuse channels, if I was willing to denounce (and name) a member of the Gandhi family relating to the so called VVIP helicopter scandal, all charges and investigations against me would be dropped. I responded in the negative, and without so much as a summons and within one week, an arrest warrant was issued against me and within a few weeks after that the Indian authorities then contacted Interpol and used this mechanism to put further pressure on me to agree to their political agenda.
Michel’s letter comes at a time when Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar addressed the issue in the Rajya Sabha and trained his guns against the Congress-led UPA government.
This letter was written to the International Tribunal four months before the Italian court delivered its verdict in the AgustaWestland corruption scam. While there is an international arrest warrant against Michel, the middleman’s letter raises questions on whether pressure was indeed made to bear on him to get him to incriminate the Gandhi family.India Today Report
Parrikar has alleged that the government’s requirements were tweaked to make sure that one of the six shortlisted companies won the bid. Rules pertaining to the height of the cabin and the height at which the helicopters could fly were also flouted, according to Parrikar.
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