The Enforcement Directorate (ED) is likely to use diplomatic channels to procure key banking details — involving a Mumbai-based firm — related to the VVIP AgustaWestland (AW) deal’s money trail from Singapore, which recently declined to share the same on technical grounds.
The transactions under the ED scanner featured alleged payments made in 2007 by a Mauritius-based firm to a Singapore-based bank account linked to a Mumbai-based company, according to an ED source. The payment is suspected to be part of the kickbacks under the probe’s scanner, which allegedly enabled the choppers’ UK-based manufacturer AW Limited swing the Rs 3,727 crore deal in 2010 that got cancelled in 2014, according to the source.
In a setback to the AW scam probe, Singapore authorities had recently refused to share the key details with the ED on the grounds that, as per norms, records there on over six-year-old banking transactions are not preserved, said the source. “Even if there is such a norm in Singapore, according to which over six-year-old records are not preserved, there is a strong chance that the cyber version of the same record must have been preserved with some agency there and can still be retrieved,” said a government source who is familiar with the agency’s probe.
The source said that the agency might therefore use diplomatic channels to “persuade” authorities in Singapore to do the utmost to retrieve the data and share the same with it. The ED had sought the details via a formal request — Letters Rogatory (LR) — sent via judicial channels from Singapore, according to the source.
The Mumbai firm is allegedly associated with a retired air force officer and a retired government official, whose roles are being verified, according to the ED source. Investigators had earlier identified the Mauritius-based firm, with a subsidiary in Singapore, for its alleged links with three key European middlemen, who are under the probe’s scanner.
