Since national defense deals demand secrecy it also opens doors for unscrupulous middlemen and deals, and money and girlfriends are part of the favors that grease the palms of those who pass the contract or formulate specifications in the tenders.

One can only imagine how much of the tax payers’ money is wasted in buying such products whose costs, profits and bribes are incorporated together to make final invoices.

A British subsidiary of the Italian state-supported firm called Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland is a helicopter design and manufacturing company that has a presence in India since the 1970s.

The firm has sold a record 40 such eight-seater helicopters to various Indian business houses and state governments.

And to make selling easy the parent firm has reportedly been hiring influential and powerful people, retired officials and sometimes even ministers, a common method followed by many other private firms, not just for their expertise but also for their keen knowledge of flaws of the system that can be used by these firms to win deals.

The extent to which AgustaWestland went to win the tender is implicit in that an official sent a champagne bottle to its rival firm along with a message that read “you cannot win always.”

But the smell of scam put the Italian investigators on a secret chase and tapping of phones followed by cross-examinations got the cat out of the bag, all well delineated in a 64-page report.

The report talks of how the Finmeccanica head, Guiseppe Orsi, the then chief of AgustaWestland got hold of middlemen, Guido Haschke, Carlo Gerosa and Christian Michel, to make payments to intermediaries, Julie Tyagi, Docsa Tyagi and Sandeep Tyagi (all cousins of the Indian Air Chief, S.P. Tyagi) to influence the Air Chief and other Indian officials.

It sums up the astounding role of the air chief in manipulating critical technical requirements criteria to allow the Italian manufacturer to qualify for the bidding competition.

The knowledge and network of Swiss middleman Haschke, designated as a consultant in Project Advisory Services, in the Indian defense sector helped forge intimate ties with crucial defense officers and ministry men.

Immensely assured that the mode of cash payment would leave no money trail and that the slow and tedious legal process in India has come up with not a single conviction in any corruption case in any defense procurement case the wheeler-dealers freely bragged about Indian investigators not being able to identify Sanjeev Kumar Tyagi as the person behind the affair over the telephone.

But this time, Italian investigators were listening and recording such and other conversations that finally established their complicity in money laundering.

Along with the prospect of upcoming Assembly elections in many states and the general elections next year, the Indian government was pushed into a corner.

Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony hastily ordered an inquiry led by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), an Indian equivalent of FBI, into the whole shady saga but given the fact that the Indian law does not mandate CBI to register a criminal case against any alleged offender merely on basis of press reports it will have to depend on legal documents from Italy that too if the Italian government is willing to share.

A notice has been sent to AgustaWestland by the Minister after his public declaration that, “Nobody will be spared. If a company violates the conditions, they are liable for criminal action. The company is liable to be blacklisted,” and the visiting U.K. Prime Minister has also been requested for support in investigations in the case.

Opposition members of Parliament are far from convinced and term the punitive measure of black listing that comes as a result of violation of the integrity clause, fitted into every agreement, as merely a face saving exercise of the government that has been tainted with an assortment of big ticket corruption especially in its second term and go on to speculate that the delay of the government to carry out a conclusive enquiry in the helicopter case might be indicative of their knowledge that these slush funds found way to the pockets of the those at the topmost echelons of the government, air force and ruling political bigwigs.

It is rather unbelievable that when the Indian law holds both givers and receivers of bribe guilty then the government must be lax on arresting the receivers living on its soil even when the givers in Italy have been arrested.

A sections of defense experts also feel that the Minister could have instituted a verification committee to ascertain if any technical eligibility requirements have been changed deliberately to favor the Italian firm before imposing a blanket ban on it as this could severely hamper India’s defense preparedness as there are not too many competent defense companies around and far too many have already been banned from business with India.

Sharing this view is the Indian External Affairs Minister and member of Cabinet Committee of Security (the highest decision making body in defense related matters and of which Antony is also a member) who has said, “We need to examine why corruption has happened on a defense deal like this. I can understand it when a poor quality product has been pushed through as a result of corrupt practices. But this chopper is not a poor quality product. So we need to get to the bottom of this. All I can say is that we have followed all the procedures, and there was no deviation from that.”

But then, mixing up the issues of quality of the product, one that is not central to security of the country and has been only misused by politicians for personal purposes, and the allegations of graft around the purchase would tantamount to missing the point.

A quick update on the government reaction and response: recruitment of an Italian lawyer to assist CBI team and a defense official visiting Rome to get hold of Italian evidence; and, Central Vigilance Committee seeks details of irregularities on the case from the defense ministry.

As much as a nation has no option but to demand for more transparency in defense systems for the sake of its interests and security, the ruling political party also cannot afford to forget how the Bofors gun controversy had led to a direct trouncing of Rajiv Gandhi’s ruling Indian National Congress in the November 1989 general elections.