AgustaWestland is in the air—and it’s not their choppers. It’s the scam. On Thursday, April 4, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) filed the fourth supplementary chargesheet in the AgustaWestland chopper deal scam. The chargesheet is against British national Christian Michel, the alleged middleman in the AgustaWestland chopper deal. Michel was extradited to India from the UAE last December.

The chargesheet alleges that payments were made to Indian Air Force officials, bureaucrats and politicians of the governing Indian National Congress between 2006 and 2010 to clinch the deal. However, it also names three journalists whom Michel’s men approached in order to “influence public opinion”: Raju Santhanam, Manu Pubby and Shekhar Gupta. All three were once associated with The India Express in differing capacities.

While the ED chargesheet gives ample details about alleged payments made to Santhanam, Pubby and Gupta face accusations that the reportage on the scam was “toned down” after a PR official from AgustaWestland made contact with them.

Following this, on Friday, there was a coordinated attack on Gupta on Twitter with the hashtag #ShekharGuptaDalalHai trending. Outraged users used it with little compunction to bash Gupta for purportedly compromising on his journalism.

Meanwhile, Sudhir Chaudhary of the Jindal sting fame took the pains to post an excerpt from the chargesheet for those who were left confused by these developments.

Telestar—and also journalist—Arnab Goswami too was outraged. He proclaimed on-air that he was going to name names named in the chargesheet. Goswami eventually did not name them.

On April 5, 2019, The Indian Express defended itself in front-page article: “It was a series of investigative reports by Pubby in The Indian Express in 2012-13 that first brought the alleged irregularities in the AgustaWestland deal into the public domain. These prompted a probe that led to the cancellation in 2014.”

The piece also claimed that The Indian Express was the first media outlet to report on the system of bribe payments that were part of the deal as well as on Michel’s “deep historic links in India”.

The narrative constructed by the likes of Goswami and Chaudhary may not be simple as it seems. The chargesheet does not expose a Radia tapes-scale nexus as many are being led to believe. Portions of the chargesheet besides the one posted by Chaudhary reveal uncertainties and lack of clarity that blunts the teeth of the ED’s accusations.

But first, some basics

In 2006, the Indian government had floated a proposal for a brand new set of VVIP helicopters to replace the Soviet Mi-8 helicopters. In 2010, the Manmohan Singh government signed a deal to secure AgustaWestland’s 12 AW-101 helicopters for the IAF. Eight of these helicopters were to transport the President, the Prime Minister, the Vice President and other VVIPs. The remaining four were to be assigned other duties.

The deal turned into a full-blown scandal after charges of corruption emerged in 2011. An Italian probe began investigating allegations of bribery and kickbacks against Giuseppe Orsi, the CEO of Finmeccanica, AgustaWestland’s parent company.

A slew of characters were named in the probe. This included IAF chief Air Chief Marshal SP Tyagi, who faced charges of receiving money from middlemen for allegedly pushing the contract into AgustaWestland’s pocket. According to the ED, nearly ₹423 crore was paid by Christian Michel and others to enable this. The ED registered a criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in 2014.

In January 2014, the Indian government scrapped the deal.

The deal’s bad fortunes arose after Indian Express first reported about the Italian investigation into charges of corruption against AgustaWestland in February 2012. The correspondent behind these reports was Manu Pubby. Shekhar Gupta was then the newspaper’s editor-in-chief.

The supplementary chargesheet filed against Michel on April 5 names both Pubby and Gupta: “Christian Michel James in his statement … has admitted hiring services of Guy Douglas to influence the media and this fact is further corroborated by act of influence on Manu Pubby and Shekhar Gupta to tone down his article in Indian Express.”

The Michel chargesheet

The chargesheet filed by the ED on Thursday claimed that Michel admitted that a certain Guy Douglas “was in touch with several journalists”. However, besides Pubby and Gupta, it only names Raju Santhanam—former Zee News editor and former contributor to The Indian Express—and his son Ashwin Santhanam, to whom “a payment of Euro 205,860.40 was made …in addition to booking air ticket for him and his family for a total amount of ₹26.550 lacs.” The chargesheet alleges that Michel spent this big money to influence public opinion.

Another 2016 chargesheet on Michel filed by the ED had alleged that Michel had met Santhanam at his Delhi residence and in an up-market hotel in the city. Santhanam had then denied any wrongdoing: “I have absolutely nothing to hide. I have clarified my position to the authorities in the past and will continue to do so.”

Archives of The Indian Express reveal that Santhanam wrote for the newspaper occasionally between 2006 and 2009. He continued to contribute till as late as 2015.  

Besides the journalists, the chargesheet alleges that a “major part of the payment of Euro 70 million” was delivered through hawala “for payment of bribes to Air Force officials, Bureaucrats and Political leaders of ruling party”.

The chargesheet quotes Michel’s statements regarding how he got Pubby to “tone down” his articles. According to these, “toning down” probably meant inserting AgustaWestland’s perspective into Pubby’s reports in The Indian Express. For this, Michel “engaged” one Guy Douglas, a British national. Newslaundry has learnt that Douglas was the PR head at Westland.

“The media was becoming very aggressive … the most aggressive journalist was Manu Pubby,” says Michel’s statement. So Douglas arranged to meet Pubby and see if he was “willing to listen to our side of the story”. Michel then states: “I think Guy had some success as Manu Pubby became more balanced.”

Portions of the chargesheet concerned with Michel and his men’s interaction with the media.

In a series of tweets, Pubby rubbished the allegations and implications in the ED chargesheet.

“Yes, they tried their best to counter the coverage, tone it down. Did it work? No. My stories and work is testimony to that. Named them all—from AP to Michel,” he wrote.

Douglas doubled up as Westland’s spokesperson in India and carried out PR work for the company. Newslaundry was informed that most queries to the chopper company went through him. When the deal entered rocky seas between 2012 and 2014, Douglas did try to reach out to journalists, especially to those whom Westland viewed as troublesome.

However, Pubby’s stories from this period show scant signs of being “toned down”. In February 2014, his report in The Indian Express broke the story that a document produced in an Italian court carried Michel’s instructions to target close advisers of then Congress president Sonia Gandhi for the contract. The document dated back to 2008.

A couple of months previously in December 2013, Pubby had reported that a middle man named Guido Haschke was questioned in court about whether the reference to “AP” in his “budget sheet”—with “3 million euros” listed beside it—stood for Ahmed Patel, an aide to Sonia Gandhi. His report also disclosed that according to Italian investigators, the acronym FAM in this sheet stood for “Family”. “15/16 million euros” had been listed beside this initial.

In fact, what Michel claims Pubby did is to include the perspective of an individual or group one is writing about. This seems to be an important requisite especially when the individual or group involved is being accused of corruption—as AgustaWestland was.

In 2018, in an interview with LiveFist, Pubby admitted that AgustaWestland had reached out to him to ask him what he “wanted” when “things got a bit hot to handle in 2013 for the company”. He added: “The back-off was quick when I asked them for the full inside story.”

Articles from June 2005 and August 2009

The supplementary chargesheet also makes a vague reference to an article published in The Indian Express in June 2005 “to create an opportunity for AgustaWestland” (see page 30 above).

“In this regard,” it goes on, “it is appropriate to make a reference to…Shri Ashwin Santhanam, s/o Shri Raju Santhanam (a journalist) was paid €205, 860.”

The article, which can be read here, appears to be a harmless piece stating the chopper requirements of the Indian government and the firms it approached to procure them. It is unclear how this was meant “to create an opportunity for AgustaWestland”.

The chargesheet states that when ED officials showed Michel a copy of this 2005 article and questioned him about paying journalists, he denied any involvement and stated that “the payment/loan to Ashwin was to help the son of a friend. It is wrong to say this had anything to do with VIP.” VIP is a reference to the AgustaWestland deal.

Next, the ED officials showed Michel two more articles and asked him about how “he influenced the series of articles that came in Indian Express”.

Here is Michel’s response: “By this time Guy Douglas was acting for us, our media man and knew all the major outlets, so we asked him to focus on at least calming down the second article in the Indian Express. The two main people he had to reach was Manu Pubby and Shekhar Gupta.”

Which article was Michel trying to “tone down”? The officials in the ED chargesheet do not specify this. However, it is highly improbable that it is the June 20, 2005 article in The Indian Express, since Pubby then was based out of Pune and covered crime for the newspaper.

It’s possible that the ED officials were referring to an article published in the newspaper in August 2009. This is because the charge sheet mentions a “dispatch” by Michel on August 12, 2009, which reads:

“The article that came out in The Indian Express today is the next obvious step to try and stop the deal. We have been in touch with the reporter who is planning a second article this week which if we cannot stop at least we will influence it.”

But this 2009 article was not authored by Pubby. It carries the byline of Amitav Ranjan. On August 12, 2009, Ranjan had reported that the Finance Ministry had refused to approve AgustaWestland’s bid because the choppers “were too expensive at ₹3,726 crore or ₹310 crore a piece. Officials said the ministry had objected to the IAF narrowing their selection to a single vendor AgustaWestland for seeking price bid.” It’s not hard to see why it made Michel nervous.

The Express archives from August 2009 do not contain a second story on the chopper deal with Ranjan’s byline. But this can also mean that Michel and his ilk successfully “managed” the story. As he remarked about the second article in the dispatch, “if we cannot stop at least we will influence it”. However, the Express archives reveal that Ranjan, who is not mentioned in the chargesheet, did not cover the AgustaWestland deal at the time. He did not file a single story on it a year before or after his August 12 report.

Ranjan declined to comment on the issue.

Coda

The supplementary chargesheet filed by the ED raises more questions than it answers. For a lay reader, the ED’s case stands on multiple layers of uncertainties: how believable are Michel’s “dispatches”? Why are ED officials vague about media reports mentioned in the chargesheet? How does Pubby come into the picture in 2005? And which “second article” did Michel manage to “tone down”?

On April 5, former Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta took to Twitter to put out his statement in response to the references in the supplementary chargesheet. Gupta called the claims “100% untruth, laughable and utterly preposterous”.

He went on: “The truth is the exact opposite. The Indian Express, under the leadership of Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta, broke the story first, was the forefront of the media investigation into the AgustaWestland VVIP helicopter deal scam and was widely commended for its coverage.” The statement added that the timing of Michel’s “lie” was deeply suspicious.

Gupta’s statement did not include any comment on the Raju Santhanam’s contributions to The Indian Express under his “leadership as Editor-in-Chief”.

Raj Kamal Jha, currently Chief Editor at The Indian Express, declined to comment on the issue. He directed this reporter to the newspaper’s front-page defence published on April 5, 2019. While another article by the newspaper did report Santhanam’s name propping in the chargesheet, both pieces did not comment on his association with the The Indian Express.

Newslaundry sent a questionnaire to Gupta. This story will be updated as and when he responds.