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Italian Court judgment exposing Sonia Gandhi & Manmohan

Singh in AgustaWestland Chopper Deal (Full report)
April 26, 2016

Politics
Corruption
The complete judgment of Italian Appellate Court in Milan in the AgustaWestland bribery case.
By Team PerformanceGurus -

The complete judgment of Italian Appellate Court in Milan in the AgustaWestland bribery case.

This article lists the complete judgment of an Italian Court in the case of bribery in selling
AgustaWestland helicopters to India
The Italian courts judgment exposes the role of Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh in AgustaWestland Chopper Deal.
The 225-page judgment also reveals that Sonias Political Secretary accepted the commission of 15 to 16 million
($17 18 million) from the middlemen. The judgment of the appeal court in Milan convicting AgustaWestland
chopper company chief Giuseppe Orsi described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders in India and
lobbied with them to bag the Rs 3600-crore ($451 million) deal. Reproducing the handwritten notes seized from
middlemen, the judgment says that the political leaders accepted the commission of 15 to 16 million Euros (around

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Rs.120 to 125 crores) in the controversial purchase of 12 VVIP chopper deal. It also names the role of Sonia
Gandhis trusted aide and AICC General Secretary Oscar Fernandes and the then National Security Advisor MK
Narayanan (Page 193).

Mrs. Gandhi and her closest advisers are the people who the British ambassador should target

The 225-page judgment of the appeal court in Milan also annexed several documents, handwritten notes exchanged
between the middlemen on how the total commission of Euro 30 million between Indias political leaders,
bureaucracy, and Air Force officials.

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Sonia Gandhis name (signora GANDHI) is mentioned four times, two times each on page 193 and 204 of the
judgment, convicting Orsi and other officials of Finmeccanica, the firm which manufactures AgustaWestland VVIP
Choppers. Orsi and other officials were convicted for four and a half years.
A letter dated March 15, 2008, seized by investigators shows the main middleman Christian Michel, who is still a
fugitive, writing to Peter Hulet, then India region sales and liaison head of the helicopter company. The letter states
that Sonia is the main driving force behind this deal and she will no longer fly in the existing MI- 8 choppers. The
letter is quoted verbatim in the judgment. Details of lobbying and corruption of Congress leadership, writing to the
then British High Commissioner in India that he should target top Congress leadership for clinching the deal are

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clearly explained.

Dear Peter, since Mrs. Gandhi is the driving force behind VIP will no longer fly in the MI-8. Mrs. Gandhi and her
closest advisers are the people who the British ambassador should target, said the letter of Michel seized by the
probe team. This letter was seized from the home of arrested middleman Guido Haschke in later early 2013.
The judgment also says Haschke had identified all the Congress leaders including Sonia Gandhi and Ahmed Patel
on the court when their photos were shown to him during the trial by the Italian prosecution.
The Page 9 of the Judgment also affixed the handwritten note of Michel exchanged to Haschke on how to distribute
the total commission of 30 Million Euro. Air Force officials were allotted six Million Euro and Bureaucracy including
Defence Ministry officials to be allotted 8.4 Million Euro. The note gives split up to several top bureaucrats like DG
Acquisition, Defence Secretary (DS), Joint Secretary(JS) etc. For more, see the interactive Pie chart below:

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Details of how 30 million Euros was to be

distributed
Political

Air Force

Bureaucracy

28%

52%

20%

The note says Political leaders were to be allotted 15 to 16 Million Euro and the name shown to political level was
noted as AP. Only one political leader to whom the money handed over is shown as AP, which refers to Ahmed Patel
as confirmed on page 204 (see picture above). The note also shows on sharing the commission with Family and
the Judgment says it meant the family of the then Air Force Chief S P Tyagi.
Page Nos. 163 and 164 names Manmohan Singh and details that Orsi used Italian leadership and diplomats to
contact the then Prime Minister to scuttle the probe by non-cooperation from Indian government side. In Page 163,
the Judgment produces a hand-written note by Orsi from jail in July 2013 asking his people to contact then Italian
Prime Minister Monti or Ambassador Terracciano to call Manmohan Singh.
Call Monti or Amb. Terracciano in my name to ask him to
call the PM Singh, said the note seized from the prison
cell of Orsi. The Judgment in several areas blames the
non-cooperation from Indian authorities including
Defence Ministry and other probe agencies in 2013.
Note:
1. The conversion rate is 1 Euro = 1.1264 US Dollars
2. 1 US Dollar = 66.525 Rupees
Annexure:
Below is the translation of Pages 162-165 of the
judgment. The complete judgment (in Italian) is at the end
of this post. The grammar may not be perfect in some
sentences it is reproduced here for completeness.
The documents also show a wide range of surrounding
circumstances that outline a more widespread and grave

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dimension of the case (both from the point of view of the number of the people involved and in terms of financial data
than it appears from the description given in Chapter A) which is unlikely to be clarified, due to the limits that the
investigations have met in the present case, particularly because of the lack of responses from countries involved in
the case, to the requests of assistance placed by the Italian Judicial Authority: this showing a substantial disregard to
arrive at a full explanation of the facts, effectively demonstrated by the procedural behavior of the Indian Ministry of
Defense (which brought a civil action in the criminal proceedings in the first instance of this judgment), already
effectively stigmatized in the appealed judgment.
This attitude of the Indian authorities with regard to this trial clearly brings to mind an episode that occurred to ORSI
during the preliminary investigation, and falls within the context of the previously mentioned initiatives of the
defendants intended to disperse and tamper the evidence, and to create elements which are favorable and coherent
with the pre-agreed line of defense.
In the period in which the above (ORSI) was jailed at the prison of Busto Arsizio, the custodial agents found in his
cell, among his papers, a handwritten note (a copy of which was produced in the proceedings) which reads:
Call Monti
or amb. TERRACCIANO
in my name to ask him
to call the P.M. Singh
Given the date on which the document was found (03/07/13), the information contained in the text, the context in
which the protagonists of this story act and move, and other indications which appear from the documents, it is
possible to identify the people mentioned (in addition to the lawyer of the defendant):
Monti: it is undoubtedly the former Prime Minister Mario MONTI, at that time still in office;
amb . TERRACCIANO: can be identified as Pasquale TERRACCIANO, previously ambassador in Madrid,
and, at the time, Diplomatic Advisor to the Prime Minister;
P.M. Singh: the initials before the surname unequivocally lead to Manmohan SINGH, Prime Minister in India
from 2004 to 2014.
We are obviously not in a position to determine what was the message that ORSI, during his detention, intended to
send to the Head of the Government of India, but the same can be guessed if we think on one hand about the
outcome of the requests for judicial assistance sent to Indian Authorities, of which we spoke about above, and on
the other hand about the intense activities of evidence tempering which the protagonists of the story carried out for
a considerable period of time, and with a considerable deployment of resources.
The memories written by the defense skip to talk about such activities. They dedicate them only a few lines of the
extensive defensive memories of Spagnolini dated 03/24/16:
This is the lawful alternative explanation that takes into consideration also Haschkes wish to get rid of some
papers which instead have been found at Agusta and that pertained to consulting activities provided by GORDIAN
and which could be mixed with the contract of engineering works.
In addition to the attempt of the defense to circumscribe Haschkes behaviour to the hiding of some papers, the
defense here repeats the same reductive interpretative line already seen for the dialogue between Haschke and
GEROSA on the corruption and omits to quote any reference to the prolonged tampering activities of the evidence
base directly attributable to the accused, and any reference to the agreements on the defensive line and on the
representation of the incident to be provided to the Judicial Autority in order to give a semblance of legality to their

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relations: this, given the absence of any explanation from interested parties or contradicting versions, inevitably
results in a further argument in favor of the prosecution.
In brief, from the analyzed conversations we can get unequivocal indications about:
The corruption of an Indian public officer, identified as the cousin of the Tyagi brothers: in this regard, the
explicit content of the dialogue is sufficient to establish the reasonable belief that corruption took place
(recalling GEROSAs own words);
The involvement of different people in the task, including AGUSTAWESTLAND, ORSI, Bruno (SPAGNOLINI),
Gautam (KHAITAN), Juli TYAGI;
the instrumental connection between the corruption and the Indian contract
the money used for this purpose, the amounts transferred to accounts in Mauritius Islands, the cash
payments in favor of the Tyagi family and other Indian people, still in progress at that time;
the means and tricks used for the creation of the illicit funding.
About this, ORSI and his defenders evoke a conspiracy hatched by the old guard of FINMECCANICA against him,
as the leader of a line of radical renovation: hypothesis that cannot be accepted, due to the absence of reliable
evidence.
Italian Court Judgment on Augusta Westland
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