Agusta Westland VVIP chopper case: Accused names Kamal Nath's nephew, son, Salman Khurshid, Ahmed Patel in ED statement

In the Rs 3,000-crore Agusta Westland VVIP chopper case, fingers are now being pointed towards the former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s nephew Ratul Puri and defence dealer Sushen Mohan Gupta.

Accused-turned-approver in AgustaWestland VVIP chopper deal case has informed the Enforcement Directorate (ED) about entities and investments through which alleged kickbacks were routed.

Chartered accountant Rajiv Saxena, in a statement running over 1,000 pages, also detailed involvement of defence dealer Sushen Mohan Gupta and Ratul Puri.

Kamal Nath's son Bakul Nath and Congress leaders Salman Khurshid and Ahmed Patel were also mentioned in the interrogation statements of Rajiv Saxena.

Currently on bail, Saxena was extradited from Dubai in January 2019 and was interrogated by the ED which attached his assets worth Rs 385 crore.

The ED has now filed an appeal in a bid to divest Saxena of his approver status for allegedly not fully disclosing the facts of the case.

His statement, running over 1000 pages (including supporting documents), show him claiming that his role was 'limited to the structures and managing the execution' for key players like Sushen Mohan Gupta, Ratul Puri and Gautam Khaitan.

But information received via Letters Rogatory from Italy and Mauritius show that four of Saxena’s companies also received payments to the tune of $0.94 million from alleged middleman Christian Michael’s company Global Services - extradited to India in December 2018, Michel remains in jail and that in June 2000, Saxena himself acquired 99.9 per cent shareholding of Interstellar Technologies.

The statement, accessed by IE, detailed how the alleged kickbacks flowed via two companies - Saxena's Interstellar Technologies and Global Services owned by Christian Michel who was extradited to India in 2018.

Confronted with documents that the ED received from Mauritius, Saxena claimed they were 'clever forgeries' but went on to admit that he himself was a partner in investment deals through which the alleged payoffs were routed.

In the case of Sushen Mohan Gupta, Saxena told the ED that he made investments in two companies, DM Power and DM South India Hospitality.

Incidentally, in the 62 pages of accounts of Ratul Puri given to ED, there are four round figure payments made in 2014 totalling 20 million dollars and transferred into Pristine River with the name Nitin Bhatnagar written against them.