Coal scam-tainted Bagrodia’s brother is director of IDS Infotech
NEW DELHI: Former Union minister of state for coal and Congress leader Santosh Bagrodia’s younger brother Satish Bagrodia is a director in Chandigarh-based IDS Infotech Limited, which Italian investigators allege was a key vehicle in routing the AgustaWestland deal bribe money to India in the garb of fake software and engineering contracts.
According to documents accessed by Hindustan Times, Partap Krishan Agarwal is managing director of IDS Infotech and Satish Bagrodia, his two sons Ashish and Manish, and Yog Prakash Agarwal and Narinder Agarwal are the other directors. Satish and Manish were appointed directors in 1989 and Ashish in 2005.
“I have nothing to do with the business ventures of my brother,” said Santosh Bagrodia when contacted by HT. “At the time of joining politics in 1986, on my suggestion, we four brothers separated our respective businesses.”
This is not the first time, though, that his brothers’ business ventures have landed Santosh in controversy. In the coal block allocation scam, allegations were leveled against Santosh over a Rs600-crore mining contract awarded by a unit of state-owned Coal India Limited during his tenure in the coal ministry to Cuprum Bagrodia, a company of another of his brothers, Vinod. Santosh was coal minister between April 2008 and May 2009.
Satish told HT that IDS Infotech provided business and software solutions to AgustaWestland till 2009, when it “sold” this business to Aeromatrix, another Chandigarhbased firm.
And along with the business went Praveen Bakshi, an executive vice-president at IDS Infotech till 2009 and now CEO of Aeromatrix, in which two Italians, Guido Ralph Hasckhe and Carlo Gerosa, were directors. Hasckhe and Gerosa have been named by Italian prosecutors as middlemen in the Rs3,760-crore AgustaWestland deal.
VVIP CHOPPER DEAL KEEPS GETTING MURKIER
CONG LEADER’S FAMILY LINKS TO INDIAN FIRM
Santosh Bagrodia (left) was MoS for coal between April 2008 and May 2009. His name cropped up in the coal scam Younger brother Satish (right) is an equal partner of Partap K Agarwal in IDS Infotech, named by Italian investigators as a vehicle for channeling bribes to India to secure the chopper deal
CBI ENGAGES LAWYER
THE CBI HAS engaged a lawyer in Italy to represent India’s case with the Italian govt and the local courts to find out the role of Indians in the alleged kickbacks
OFFICIAL SOURCES said that the assistance of a lawyer was taken to help understand the Italian law
THE LAWYER, if necessary, will approach the court in Italy for procurement of documents related to the deal, they said.
DOCUMENTS ALMOST LOST
Alleged middleman Guido Haschke had “cleaned up” all the documents from his computer that related to the VVIP chopper deal with Italian investigators saying the details could open a “Pandora’s box”
But to Haschke’s misfortune, the documents were retrieved from his computer hard drive along with other papers hidden at his mother’s home Former Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi had allegedly appointed Haschke for the deal
US FIRM MAY BID FOR CHOPPER DEAL
US helicopter-maker Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, which had lost the ` 3,760crore chopper deal to AgustaWestland, is preparing to reenter the arms race with an upgraded platform, should India float a fresh global tender.
Courtesy:
18 Feb 2013
Hindustan Times (Mumbai)
Rajesh Ahuja rajesh.ahuja@hindustantimes.com
http://paper.hindustantimes.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
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