AgustaWestland chopper deal: Fake Punjabi music company used to lure MoD officials?

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Delhi: There may be a Punjabi music angle for clinching AgustaWestland helicopter deal, as per a media report.

As per a report in Mail Today, Christian Michel, the Italian middleman who visited India for the controversial VVIP chopper deal, had floated a media company to export Punjabi music CDs from India.

However, the company was never used for the purpose but was started to be used for obliging former officials at the Ministry of Defence.

The report says that by obliging MoD officials, Michel would in return get inside information about the chopper deal from the officials.

As per investigations, the company was just a shell or a frontal company. 

The website quoted ED sources as saying that Michel with the help of one RK Nanda had floated the company named Media Exim and lot of funds were pumped into this firm.

The money to this company came from Michel's Dubai-based company Global Services FZE, the report further adds.

The shell company was reportedly run from an office in Safdarjung Enclave flat in South Delhi and after it was discovered that the company was fake, the ED officers initiated move to attach the property.

The facts were supposedly revealed when Michel's driver was nabbed and questioned by ED officials.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar on Sunday said that he will place all facts along with the detailed chronology about the chopper deal before Parliament on May 4.

The deal for the choppers went off track in 2013 when Italy arrested the head of Finmeccanica, which owns AgustaWestland, for paying bribes to secure the deal.

An Italian court, which convicted AgustaWestland chief Giuseppe Orsi, had reportedly described how the firm paid bribes to top Congress leaders to bag the Rs 3,600 crore deal.