Tehelka Expose Barak Missile Scam agent west end Rs 1,150-crore Barak Missile Deal

Tehelka Expose Barak Missile Scam agent west end Rs 1,150-crore Barak Missile Deal

The Barak Missile Scandal is a case of alleged defense corruption relating to the purchase of Barak 1 Missile Systems by India from Israel. The case is currently under investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

Barak Missile Deal = Rs 1,150-crore
The Barak deal was signed on October 23, 2000.


In 2001 Tehelka conducted a sting operation.
According to the reports of the operation, 15 defense deals made by the Indian government had involved some sort of kickback, one of them being the Barak Missile deal.

Year 2006 - Acceptance test trials of the Barak, conducted under Admiral Madhvendra Singh, were not entirely successful, with the missile missing the mark on two occasions in 2003 and 2004 (in the first, the missile successfully intercepted its target but suffered a technical malfunction.

This defense corruption involved a group of ministers including the ex-treasurer of Samata Party R.K.Jain who has been arrested. George Fernandes and Jaya Jaitley are also named in the case.

The CBI lodged a First Information Report (FIR) on 9 October 2006 and claimed that George Fernandes the Indian defense minister at that time, and the Former Chief of the Indian Navy, Admiral Sushil Kumar were involved.

according to the FIR  Fernandes tried to get the deal approved by the Cabinet Committee on Security despite objections raised by the then Defence Secretary.

First Information Report include

1)  
former defense minister George Fernandes

2)  
Former Samata Party president Jaya Jaitly

3)  
arms dealer and ex-naval officer Suresh Nanda, who is the son of retired chief of naval staff S.M. Nanda

4)  
Samata Party ex-treasurer R.K. Jain

5)  
former Navy chief Admiral Sushil Kumar


The five alleged middlemen are

1)  
M S Sahani

2)  
Lt Col V K Beri

3)  
Vipin Khanna

4)  
Arvind Khanna

5)  
Major S J Singh

In Mumbai, the CBI raided Suresh Nanda’s office Dynatron Pvt Ltd and his brother’s office Crown Export Pvt Ltd, both located in Andheri.

Suresh Nanda has also figured in kickbacks allegedly received in procurement of Armoured Recovery Vehicles (ARVs) along with R K Jain.

FIR said that Suresh Nanda  was paid Rs one crore through R K Jain to ignore the technically sound and lowest offer proposal of M/s PSB Bohemia and get the project awarded to two other companies on the pretext of promoting indigenous production of ARVs.

The FIR on the Barak deal stated that
Suresh Nanda paid Rs 2 crore to Jaya Jaitly at George Fernandes’s house to get the NDA government’s signature on a contract for 7 Barak Anti-Missile (AMD) Systems and 200 missiles from M/s Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd (IAI).

The deal, the FIR said, was done in haste and despite the DRDO’s objection.

The then DRDO chief, the FIR said, had recommended the indigenous Trishul for the Navy.

Suresh Nanda, the FIR alleged, also paid several lakh of rupees to former Samata Party treasurer R K Jain to influence the then Defense Minister’s decision.

The CBI FIR accused Fernandes of overruling the DRDO’s opinion “at the behest of the middlemen/agent”.

It said that Navy chief Sushil Kumar, in connivance with middlemen and other accused, directly put up a proposal to Fernandes for procurement of seven Barak AMD systems.

The proposal, the FIR said, had also been processed as a single-tender basis and the negotiated money was in excess by US $17 million (Rs 71 crore).

Year 2006 -  In the raids conducted at 27 premises in Delhi and eight others in Gurgaon, Bangalore, Chandigarh and Mumbai, the CBI seized Rs 62.5 lakh unaccounted cash from Sanjiv’s office located in a New Delhi hotel.
It took away 15 credit cards of Nanda, saying that the CBI would study his expenses’ pattern.
The CBI also recovered Rs 70 lakh from Suresh Nanda’s Prithviraj Raj Road house.
Besides money, the CBI has seized several documents from the premises/offices of six middlemen.
The documents link them with the Defence dealers in the concerned cases, CBI sources said.
It also confiscated computer hardware and pen drives to study records.

Regarding this case in year 2008
Arms dealer Suresh Nanda and his son Sanjeev Nanda and his chartered accountant Bipin Shah and Deputy Director of Income Tax Ashutosh Verma, an IRS officer of the 1999 batch, were arrested from a room in Marriott hotel in Juhu Mumbai.
They were arrested when they were holding "discussion and negotiation as part of the conspiracy" to withhold certain files relating to purchase of Barak Missile Systems from Israel in which Suresh Nanda is an accused.

While all the four have been booked under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and section 201 (committing offence to cause disappearing of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code, Verma was further slapped with the charge of abusing his official position and criminal misconduct on Prevention of Corruption Act.

Immediately after arresting the four, the CBI conducted near-simultaneous searches at 12 places –
Six in Delhi,
Four in Mumbai,
One each in Goa and Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh) –
And claimed to have recovered Rs 32 lakh cash, nine computers (including the laptop of Verma) and two electronic chests.

The FIR notes that the Indian Defense Research & Development Organization had sought to block the import of the Barak system right until the end.

The FIR restates R.K. Jain's admission to Tehelka that 3 per cent of this cost went to Fernandes and Jaya Jaitley as commission, while he himself was given 0.5 per cent.

These commissions were paid to them by Suresh Nanda, the middleman in the deal, according to the Tehelka tapes

The Barak missile system was jointly developed by Israel Aircraft Industries (IAI) and RAFAEL Armament Development Authority of Israel

On 23 October 2000, contracts had been signed by the Indian government to procure seven Barak systems at a total cost $199.50 million and 200 missiles at a cost of $69.13 million.

This was done despite objections raised by several groups

The Navy Chief of Staff Sushil Kumar is currently under investigation as to why these objections were not considered.

Transcripts of conversations between the undercover Tehelka operative and R. K. Jain indicate that Jain accepted bribes from Suresh Nanda in the amount of one crore

The NDA government set up a commission to investigate the matter.

The UPA government, rejected the partial report by the commission and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) began investigating the case.

Suresh Nanda, his son Sanjeev Nanda, and two others were arrested on the 9 March 2008 under section 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and section 201 (committing offence to cause disappearing of evidence) related to the scandal.

A Tehelka investigation in 2001 revealed possible influence Lt-Cmdr Suresh Nanda and Admiral SM Nanda may have had with the Indian Ministry of Defense in swinging deals.

In these tapes, the reporter is posing as a representative of the fictional large arms supplier West End.

At one point, the Samata Party national treasurer RK Jain is trying to convince Tehelka about his prowess in swinging deals.

He mentions how in the first defense deal that he was involved in as the party treasurer, Suresh Nanda of Crown Corporation had paid Samata Party Rs 1 crore to swing the Rs 250-crore (USD 60 million) order for Armored Recovery Vehicles (ARV) in favor of a Slovakian company.

 Samata Party treasurer R.K. Jain: "Nanda approached me. Czechoslovakia's price was the lowest, second Slovakian, third was the Poland."

Tehelka: "Haan, Haan."

R.K. Jain: "He said, 'I will give you one crore rupees in advance'."

Tehelka: "Okay."

R.K. Jain: "You get disapproved the last one. Czechoslovakia because they are so lower that we cannot match their price."

Tehelka: "Okay."

R.K. Jain: "If you can push him out. Delegation is going on to the... delegation has been ordered to go to Czechoslovakia. Stop this delegation, and technically reject this company. Here are the documents."

Tehelka: "Hmm."

R.K.Jain: "By which it's proved that this company is closed for the last two years. They will start only after getting this order."

Tehelka: "Yeah, yeah."

R.K. Jain: "I will give one crore rupees. And I will give you... if they are technically disapproved, then you are my agent."

Tehelka: "Yeah."

R.K. Jain: "For this particular... perks... and I will give you so much of commission."

Tehelka: "Okay."

R.K. Jain: "I said, 'Fine.' He gave me the correspondence. I took the correspondence to George."

(The then Defense minister George Fernandes was from Samata Party)

Tehelka: "Hmm."

R.K. Jain: "And he said, 'All right, I'll reject it.' He is a very intelligent man."...

Tehelka: Okay, it is manipulated.

R.K. Jain: He wrote straight away on the file himself. He never goes and orders to a Joint Secretary. He wrote it himself, and sent the file back. Nanda gave me one crore rupees. He called me, "Yes, Mr. Jain, the file has come down. Like you know George…"

Tehelka: Yeah, yeah.

Jain also said that he had received another Rs 1 crore for the Samata Party from Suresh Nanda to help swing the contract for an air-to-air and surface-to-surface missile system for the Indian Navy.

Still the case is going on.

Justice Delayed Justice Denied

Reality views by sm –

Monday, August 27, 2012

Tags - Barak Missile Scam