{"id":454641,"date":"2021-12-07T10:51:26","date_gmt":"2021-12-07T05:21:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/?p=454641"},"modified":"2021-12-07T12:14:56","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T06:44:56","slug":"michel-signed-sham-contracts-to-hide-trail-of-agusta-kickbacks-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/michel-signed-sham-contracts-to-hide-trail-of-agusta-kickbacks-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"Michel signed \u2018sham contracts\u2019 to hide trail of Agusta kickbacks: ED"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Several \u201cservice contracts\u201d signed between British middleman Christian Michel and his main client AgustaWestland were \u201csham contracts\u201d to camouflage alleged kickbacks from the Rs 3,600-crore helicopter deal in India, according to documents submitted in court by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).<\/p>\n<p>In its prosecution complaint, the agency said that these were meant to \u201ccreate a legal facade and to route the kickbacks\u201d under these agreements. And \u201ccreate a smokescreen\u201d between these contracts and the chopper purchase making it hard to track the payoff trail. <\/p>\n<p>Michel\u2019s interrogation report, accessed by The Indian Express, details his version of these deals, and his turbulent career graph in India \u2014 from his father Wolfgang Michel\u2019s support to start in 1985 to how he nearly shut shop after the Pokhran tests of 1998;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Several \u201cservice contracts\u201d signed between British middleman Christian Michel and his main client AgustaWestland were \u201csham contracts\u201d to camouflage alleged kickbacks from the Rs 3,600-crore helicopter deal in India, according to documents submitted in court by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). In its prosecution complaint, the agency said that these were meant to \u201ccreate a legal facade and to route the kickbacks\u201d under these agreements. And \u201ccreate a smokescreen\u201d between these contracts and the chopper purchase making it hard to track the payoff trail. Michel\u2019s interrogation report, accessed by The Indian Express, details his version of these deals, and his turbulent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[130],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-454641","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newspapers"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454641\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}