The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has mentioned names of three Indian journalists and several political leaders in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland chopper deal supplementary chargesheet, said sources.
The names of these leaders and journalists, are however, not as accused in the chargesheet filed before a city court in New Delhi on Thursday.
The agency, in its supplementary chargesheet filed under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), said that a part of kickback was paid to defence officials, bureaucrats, mediapersons and important political persons of the ruling party when the deal was being struck.
As per the chargesheet, Christian Michel, the alleged middleman arrested in the AgustaWestland VVIP choppers deal case, had used important personalities in the field of media in order to influence the public opinion.
The chargesheet says, “As per Casana sheet, a payment of Euro 205860.40 was made to Ashwin Santhanam, son of Raju Santhanam in addition to booking an air ticket for him and his family for a total amount of Rs 26.50 lakh.” Raju Sanjhanam had not issued any statement on this till the filing of this report.
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Michel has accepted that he had made such payments and admitted to hiring services of Guy Douglas to influence the media and this fact is further corroborated by an act of using influence on journalists “Manu Pubby and Shekhar Gupta to tone down the article in Indian Express”, said sources.
Michel also testified that Douglas was in touch with several journalists. Currently, Michel is in Tihar jail and he has been named in the chargesheet as an accused.
The chargesheet also mentions that Michel, Guido Haschke and his associate Carlo Gerosa – all middlemen in the case – made payment to defence officials, bureaucrats and political leaders of ruling party. A total bribe of Euro 70 million allegedly exchanged hands in this case in two parts to Christian Michel and Agusta Westland’s Guido Haschke.
NewsMobile can not independently verify the veracity of these claims in the ED supplementary charge sheet. While Shekhar Gupta (editor-in-chief of The Print) denied any involvement in the case.
The AgustaWestland scam wouldn’t have been exposed, deal cancelled and suspects identified but for this reporting. We led the coverage of this story by some distance and are proud of it. https://t.co/JgIXvmHCnl
— Shekhar Gupta (@ShekharGupta) April 5, 2019
AgustaWestland supplementary chargesheet, suspect Christian Michel’s laughable and preposterous lies about The Indian Express coverage and a statement from Shekhar Gupta.
Read here: https://t.co/9CRC8OCwUd pic.twitter.com/C0pQpNuGWk
— ThePrint (@ThePrintIndia) April 5, 2019
The story did create the ripples in the media community and is also embarrassing as Gupta a senior journalist also heads the Editors Guild. As the story broke it, the alleged role of the three journalists drew criticism from the media fraternity.
Arnab Goswami Editor in Chief of Republic did a show on the story on Thursday.
#AgustaCaseCracked | 3 journalists named in the ED chargesheet accessed by Republic TV, here’s Arnab Goswami’s message for them pic.twitter.com/u9dJFKQnK3
— Republic (@republic) April 4, 2019
It was also tweeted by Sudhir Chaudhary Editor in Chief of Zee News.
For the kind perusal of those who want to know which journalists have been named in the #AugustaWestlandScam .Here is an excerpt of the chargesheet filed by ED. Shared in public interest. pic.twitter.com/At192cgVza
— Sudhir Chaudhary (@sudhirchaudhary) April 4, 2019