AgustaWestland: Former Indian Air Force chief S P Tyagi's cousin admits to links with middlemen

One of the cousins of former IAF chief S P Tyagi, Sanjeev Tyagi, has admitted to have had financial dealings with European middlemen Carlo Gerosa and Guido Haschke in AgustaWestland chopper deal, CBI claimed.

Chances of first arrests by CBI in the high-profile case increased as sources in the agency claimed that Sanjeev and another accused Gautam Khaitan, who were questioned on Friday, remained evasive and concealed information.

The sources claimed Sanjeev has also admitted property dealings with the former Air Chief.

"But when asked about the details, he did not give proper details and remained evasive during the questioning on some crucial questions," said one of the officials.

Message sent seeking his reaction remained unanswered.

Besides Sanjeev and Khaitan, two other accused in the CBI FIR Sandeep Tyagi and Rajeev Tyagi were questioned by the agency today individually in separate chambers at its headquarters here for over eight hours.

CBI sources claimed Khaitan, former board member of Aeromatrix--one of the firms accused of receiving alleged bribe in the deal, "concealed" information regarding his companies and AgustaWestland.

He was allowed a break presumably to bring some documents which he was not carrying with him at the time of questioning.

The sources said Khaitan yesterday had admitted setting up a shell company IDS Tunisia through which alleged kickbacks were received from AgustaWestland which were then forwarded to different countries and from there to India.

CBI had registered a case against S P Tyagi along with 13 others including his cousins and European middlemen.

The allegation against S P Tyagi is that he reduced flying ceiling of the helicopter from 6,000m to 4,500m (15,000ft) which put AgustaWestland helicopters in the race for the deal without which its choppers were not even qualified for submission of bids.

Tyagi has denied allegations against him and said the change of specifications, which brought AgustaWestland into contention, was a collective decision in which senior officers of Indian Air Force, SPG and other departments were involved.