Amid the ongoing battle between Congress-BJP over AgustaWestland chopper deal controversy, a report has revealed that the UK-based subsidiary of Italian conglomerate Finmeccanica is yet to return 106 million euros to India.
NDTV reported on Friday that AgustaWestland hasn’t yet returned some 106 million euros paid for three choppers whose deliveries had been made to India before the scam came to light and the deal was subsequently cancelled.
However, previously it was reported that following the revelation of a middleman in the deal, India had recovered the entire down after the cancellation of the deal .
Now, this new revelation backs the 2013 report of Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), where he pointed out several procedural lapses in the acquisition of the helicopters.
The then CAG report mentioned “the benchmarked cost worked out by the Contract Negotiation Committee was Rs 4877.5 crore as against the estimated cost of Rs 793 crore approved by the Ministry in January 2006.
This was more than six times the estimated cost. Further, the offered cost of the vendor was Rs 3966 crore. This was much below the benchmarked cost of Rs 4877.5 crore. Thus, the benchmarked cost was higher by 22.80 per cent.”