AgustaWestland VVIP Chopper Scam: Flip-flop and escape route on Narendra Modi meet

New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government on Wednesday flipped on its earlier refusal to deny a meeting between the Prime Minister and his Italian counterpart last September, amid a political storm over charges that the Indian leader had offered Rome a deal in exchange for dirt on Sonia Gandhi. But the denials issued by finance minister Arun Jaitley in Parliament and then the foreign office in the evening were worded in a manner that does not strictly reject the possibility of a "brush-by" meeting between the two Prime Ministers alleged by a British arms agent. They also leave unanswered key questions over the Modi administration's flip-flops on the Rs 3,600-crore chopper scam involving Italian firm Finmeccanica and its British subsidiary AgustaWestland at the heart of a political slanging match that rocked Parliament on Wednesday.

The Telegraph had reported on February 2 allegations by British middleman Christian Michel to two international tribunals that Modi offered to allow two arrested Italian marines to return home in exchange for links between Sonia, the Congress chief, and the chopper scam. Modi had made the offer in a "brush-by" meeting with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in New York on the margins of the UN General Assembly (UNGA), Michel alleged in a December letter to the tribunals in Hamburg and The Hague where Italy and India are battling over the marines. "No such meeting at all has been held," finance minister Arun Jaitley said in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday, after Opposition leader Ghulam Nabi Azad questioned the government on Michel's claims. Five hours later, the ministry of external affairs issued a far more qualified statement. "There was no meeting between Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy as part of Prime Minister's bilateral meetings at the UNGA in September 2015," the ministry said.

But the foreign office had in February told this newspaper it could not deny the possibility of a "brush-by" chat between Modi and Renzi in New York, while rejecting the charge that the Indian Prime Minister had offered his Italian counterpart any deal. "I can't deny the possibility of a brief conversation," foreign ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup had told The Telegraph then, citing the presence of hundreds of world leaders in New York during the UNGA to suggest that a short chat with many leaders was always possible. "The charges are too ridiculous to comment on." The foreign ministry's diplomatic choice of words yesterday, that only rejected a meeting "as part of PM's bilateral meetings" leaves it an escape route. "Brush-by" meetings, where leaders chat while passing by each other, are almost never formally recognised as "bilateral meetings" and are often held on the margins of multilateral events like the meeting on peacekeeping in New York both Modi and Renzi attended last September. US President Barack Obama had called that meeting on the sidelines of the UNGA. But the government's attempts to broadly suggest that Modi and Renzi did not hold the conversation alleged by Michel represent only the latest in a series of about-turns the Modi administration has made in its handling of the chopper scandal. In July 2014, soon after coming to power, the Modi government formally blacklisted Finmeccanica. But in October 2014, it included the firm among "foreign investors" in a list it demonstrated as proof of global interest in Modi's "Make in India" initiative. Modi's office also acknowledged a telephone conversation with Renzi in August 2014, where the Italian Prime Minister told his Indian counterpart he wanted to speed up a resolution to the charges against the marines, accused of killing two Indian fishermen off the coast of Kerala in 2012. On October 9, 2014, a court in Busto Arsizio, Italy, exonerated the executives of Finmeccanica and AgustaWestland, and key middlemen in the chopper deal, of any "international corruption" - bribing Indian officials. The Indian embassy in Rome wrote to the court indicating it had no desire to appeal the judgment. By July 2015, officials at the CBI - which was probing the scam - said the agency was likely to wind up the case soon. But in August last year, Modi's office pressed the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI to fast-track the probe. A special CBI court issued an arrest warrant against Michel on September 24, and the agency sought and procured an Interpol red corner notice against the British agent on November 25, the foreign ministry on Wednesday said. India had requested the UK to arrest Michel and extradite him, first in January and then February, the foreign office said. -The Telegraph Calcutta