AgustaWestland: Money maze of Rs 160 crore for kickbacks discovered by ED

New Delhi, May 27: The probe into the AgustaWestland deal has revealed that large chunks of money had been laundered by raising fictitious invoices. The probe by the Enforcement Directorate further has found that the invoices which were fictitious in nature were raised to companies in Mauritius.

The ED says that one company based in Singapore called M/s Interstellar PTA was used to route the money meant to be paid as bribe into India. The ED suspects that this Singapore company could be linked to Interstellar Technologies in Mauritius which had routed in a large sum of money.

The ED probe has found that a total sum of Rs 160 crore had been routed in to pay bribes. The probe accuses Carlo Gerosa, Guido Haschke and Indian middleman Gautam Khaitan of bringing in this sum of Rs 160 crore. A firm called as the IDS Tunisia is alleged to have received this sum from AgustaWestland.

This amount was moved into India through various firms which were set up by the middlemen. The firms had raised fictitious invoices to move the money. The ED says that one company based in Singapore called M/s Interstellar PTA was used to route the money meant to be paid as bribe into India.

The ED suspects that this Singapore company could be linked to Interstellar Technologies in Mauritius which had routed in a large sum of money.

Further the probe has also found that the highest amount of this Rs 160 crore was moved into Interstellar Technologies in Mauritius. The ED says that this company alone had received Rs 75 crore.

The remaining money was was moved into Aeromatrix Info Solutions, IDS Infotech and IDS Tunisia.

OneIndia News