72-year old Tyagi is the first chief of the Indian Air Force to be chargesheeted in a corruption or a criminal case by the CBI. DH File Photo
S P Tyagi became the first former Air Chief to be charge-sheeted in a corruption on Friday with CBI filing a voluminous charge sheet in the multi-crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam.
The charge sheet came four years after the irregularities in the purchase of 12 VVIP choppers from AgustaWestland came to light and CBI registered a FIR naming Tyagi and 11 others.
Besides Tyagi, those named in the charge sheet are former vice Air chief J S Gujral, Tyagi's cousin Julie Tyagi, former CEOs of AgustaWestland Guiseppe Orsi and Finmeccanica's Bruno Spagnolini, three alleged middlemen Christian Michel, Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa and lawyer Gautam Khaitan and the Italian company are named in the charge sheet.
While the court has fixed September 6 to peruse the charge sheet, CBI sources said, the agency will file more documents and annexures in the court next Wednesday.
According to the CBI, there was an estimated loss of Euros 398.21 million (around Rs 2,666 crore) to the exchequer in the deal signed by the UPA government in February 2010 for the supply of VVIP choppers worth Euros 556.262 million.
Tyagi, his cousin Sanjeev and Khaitan were arrested on 9 December 2016 and are currently on bail. All the accused have denied wrongdoing. Orsi and Spagnolini were convicted by an Italian court on charges of bribing Indian officials for the contract. The Enforcement Directorate had also registered a money laundering case.
CBI officials claimed the investigations brought to light undue favour was shown towards AgustaWestland and accepted illegal vendors through middlemen and relatives.
According to CBI, during his tenure as the IAF chief, Tyagi and "with his approval" the Air Force "conceded to reduce the service ceiling for VVIP helicopters from 6,000 m to 4,500 m as mandatory (although) it was vehemently opposing the same on grounds of security constraints and other related reasons".
The CBI has informed the court that it has been able to establish money trail worth Euro 62 million (around Rs 415.40 crore) from countries like Mauritius, Singapore, the UAE, Tunisia, the UK and the British Virgin Island. The CBI had earlier sent Letters Rogatories seeking information from these countries.