CHRISTIAN MICHEL, an accused in the Rs3,600 crore AgustaWestland helicopter deal case, is cooling his heels in the high security jail number seven at the Tihar complex in Delhi. He reads books, wrapped in his blanket, and picks up the newspaper every day to see what the government, especially Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has been saying about him.
He gets Rs6,000 as monthly allowance, which he spends on chips, tea, coffee, and Indian breads and curries. His favourite is the chicken biryani he had from Chandni Chowk, which he was served while in the custody of the Enforcement Directorate. The Christmas cake the agency gave him, on December 25, was also a treat.
Since being extradited, Michel has spent four weeks in police custody, some of it in the comfortable CBI suite at the agency headquarters and some in the ED lock-up, where he was lodged with some criminals. He was then sent to judicial custody till February 27.
The CBI and the ED are probing the AgustaWestland deal, which was for 12 VVIP choppers. Michel is accused of arranging bribes for Indian politicians and bureaucrats, to swing the deal for the company.
“Investigating agencies are hunting for answers that the nation deserves to know,” Modi bellowed at a huge public rally in Solapur, Maharashtra, on January 9. “What is the connection between Michel mama (uncle) and the Congress? Was the UPA running its government or Michel mama’s darbar (court)?”
Sonia and Rahul Gandhi | AFP
BJP president Amit Shah joined in, sending out scathing tweets about a “time tested and deep friendship” between the Gandhis (Sonia and Rahul) and Michel. He also said Michel was passing on details of his questioning on Sonia to his local lawyer.
Ever since early December, when Michel was extradited from Dubai under the watchful eyes of national security adviser Ajit Doval, the name of the 54-year-old foreigner has come up in many political debates. He was the Centre’s prized catch, and the joy was evident in government circles.
Apparently, the Modi government sees Michel more as a political trump card than as an accused in a major corruption case. In fact, the BJP is using every word Michel utters to hit out at the Congress (the deal took place during the UPA rule) before the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.
But Michel himself is no novice at politics. The UK citizen is a globetrotting businessman who has made many international deals that require a deep political understanding of each country. And, apparently, his Indian connection goes beyond his 300 visits here or his current stint in jail. The CBI and the ED say former prime minister Indira Gandhi knew his father, Wolfgang Max Richard Michel. The agencies are now digging out parliamentary records of 1982-83 to substantiate their claims that Gandhi had referred to Wolfgang as a “friend” of India. The CBI says he was a consultant of AgustaWestland (UK) for the Indian territory (then Westland Helicopters) in the 1980s.
While Michel’s lawyer Rosemary Patrizi told THE WEEK that the agencies were pressurising Michel to name the Gandhis, investigators said that the alleged references to “AP” and “family”—in a diary seized by the Italian police and later handed over to the CBI—hold substantial clues to the beneficiaries of the deal.
CBI sources said these references, present in the agency’s first charge-sheet, have been corroborated by Michel; he denied writing them though. He also denied any dealings or links with the Gandhis and any Congress member, said investigators. Sources said Michel told interrogators that Guido Haschke, another accused and alleged middleman, wrote the words to get Michel in trouble.
Haschke, in his plea bargain in the Italian court, said he had written the budget breakup in the diaries, at Michel’s instance, because the latter was dyslexic and could not write cursively. Haschke has since turned approver in the case.
While the CBI and ED believe that Michel could shed more light on the money trail and references such as “Italian lady’s son” and “next Prime Minister”, officials said he was being careful to not end up on the wrong side of the law in Italy, where he has been exonerated. Changing his stance before a foreign jurisdiction can invite perjury charges, which entails severe punishment in Italy.
The CBI’s first charge-sheet, filed on September 1, 2017, had also named former Air Chief Marshal S.P. Tyagi as one of the beneficiaries in the deal. Interrogators said that Michel told them about Tyagi being of great help (in the deal), a charge the latter vehemently denied. However, if the agencies can connect the dots before filing the next charge-sheet, Tyagi could be in trouble.
At the moment, however, the CBI and the ED have their hands tied. As Michel is a precious deportee, they cannot put too much pressure on him to reveal anything. Moreover, sources said the agencies do not have all the related original documents and they are not sharing their findings with the defence lawyers. The agencies have also not got any favourable response to their letters rogatory to Italy and Switzerland, and are yet to find any breakthrough in establishing the money trail.
On December 30, 2018, the ED wrote to Michel’s lawyers, asking for the bank statements of the accounts he had in various banks in Dubai. This was a clear sign that—after 13 years of the tender, six years of proceedings and nearly four weeks of having Michel in custody—the ED still needed help.
Then there are international conventions and treaties, dealing with “bribery of foreign public officials”, which do not allow re-investigation of cases already pursued by other countries.
“The Swiss and Italian court verdicts were in favour of Michel,” Aljo K. Joseph, the expelled Youth Congress leader who is appearing for Michel in a Delhi court, told THE WEEK. “No new evidence has been collected by any of the agencies to put up a better case.”
Because of his dyslexia, said investigators, Michel takes hours to read and cannot write without making mistakes. But, he speaks really well, they added. Michel’s first attempt at writing a note to Joseph had landed him in trouble. An ED investigator saw him slipping it into Joseph’s palm during a handshake in court. According to sources, Michel, through the note, wanted legal advice on how to deal with certain followup questions his interrogators had on “Mrs Gandhi (Indira)”. The ED, miffed, asked the court to curb Michel’s legal access, but was later placated by Michel’s team.
Notably, Michel was allowed consular access once in judicial custody, and the British High Commission is now closely liaising with his defence team. While the investigating agencies said they had no problem in granting him consular access, the foreign ministry took time to clear it, indicating that the BJP government was in no hurry.
As of now, Michel seems to have settled down in jail. These days, he is busy buying calling cards to make international calls to his family in the UK and lawyer in Italy. Recently, the special CBI court allowed him to make 15-minute international and local calls. Though Michel’s siblings belong to well-off and well-connected families of attorneys and businessmen, investigators said he does not like talking about them. Apparently, he is cautious and amused at the agencies’ frenzied interest in his family.