Italian judge says no proof against Sonia

Italian judge Marco Maiga has said they have no “direct evidence” against Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in AgustaWestland case but indicated involvement of political secretary Ahmed Patel.

Maiga, the president of the Courts of Appeals in Milan, who pronounced the AgustaWestland verdict, said the “traces were not so clear or so heavy” for the court to link Indian politicians and ask them to appear before it.

“We have no evidence against Sonia Gandhi. Only a mention of her in a fax. The translation of the fax was sent to (Christian) Michel. Gandhi has been indicated as someone who will fly in the VVIP helicopters. The same place is the mention of Manmohan Singh,” Maiga told the channel NewsX.

On Patel, he said it was not their specific interest to indict him. “He is not essential to our investigation but he is something that is around the principal story,” he added.

The document with names of Indian politicians was recovered from the cell of former Finmeccanica chief Giuseppe Orsi in which he said Sonia was the driving force behind the deal besides mentioning Singh and Patel.

Maiga’s remarks would be a relief for the Congress, which is bracing for a discussion in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday where the ruling BJP wants to put the main opposition in a spot by placing on record the norms that were relaxed by UPA government to help AgustaWestland.

The controversy erupted after the 225-page judgment overturning the acquittal of Orsi and Finmeccanica’s helicopter subsidiary AgustaWestland's former CEO Bruno Spagnolini.

Asked about the basis on which politicians were mentioned in the order, Maiga said the judgment’s objective was the relationship between Orsi and senior officials with former Air Force chief S P Tyagi.

“We had some traces of the presence of many other people. A manuscript was found in this investigation, which has the initials of some persons who were identified as politicians or bureaucrats. But we have not individually verified their exact role in this case,” he said.

While the judge explained the initials in a document about payment of bribes, he was asked whether “AP” in the list was indicative of Patel. “This is just a hypothesis, not direct evidence. We have no direct evidence,” Maigo said.

He said there was a document of middleman Guido Haschke that talks of his relationship with Tyagi and his cousins.