An Italian court on Monday acquitted Giuseppe Orsi, the head of AgustaWestland’s parent company Finmeccanica, in a bribery case related to the 2010 chopper deal with the Indian government, Reuters reported. The appeals court in Milan also cleared Bruno Spagnolini, once the head of helicopter company AgustaWestland, of all charges.
“There isn’t sufficient proof” to convict the accused of corruption, the court said.
The AgustaWestland helicopter deal is related to an agreement India got into in 2010 to buy 12 helicopters from the Italian firm. The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government was in power at the time. The deal was put on hold after Italian authorities arrested Orsi in 2013.
In 2016, a judge in Italy sentenced Orsi to four-and-a-half years in prison for corruption, and Spagnolini to four years in jail. However, in December that year, Italy’s top court ordered a retrial of the case.
In December 2017, a court in Delhi granted bail to former Air Marshal Jaspal Singh Gujral. The CBI had chargesheeted Gujral, along with former Air Force chief SP Tyagi and eight others on September 1, 2017.
The agency had claimed that SP Tyagi conspired to reduce the service ceiling for VVIP helicopters from 6,000 metres to 4,500 metres, which the Air Force had opposed before because of security concerns, so that AgustaWestland qualified for submitting bids for the deal.
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