India has formally lifted its seven-year-long ban on Italy’s leading multinational company Leonardo SpA, thus allowing it to take part in the bidding for defence contracts in the future.
The Ministry of Defence on Friday notified a new list of the companies barred from doing business with it — dropping the AgustaWestland International Limited and its parent company Leonardo SpA, which was earlier known as Finmeccanica.
The move to lift the ban on the Leonardo SpA came just about two weeks after Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a bilateral meeting with his counterpart in the Italian Government, Mario Draghi, on the sideline of the G20 summit in Rome.
The Ministry of Defence had blacklisted the M/s Finmeccanica, Italy and its subsidiary M/s AgustaWestland, the UK, in 2014 after they were accused of paying bribes to secure a $48 million contract from the Government of India for supplying 12 helicopters for ferrying the President, the Vice President, the Prime Minister and the other VVIPs.
The scam was probed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
Finmeccanica rebranded itself as Leonardo SpA on January 1, 2017. The AgustaWestland ceased to exist after it merged into the Leonardo SpA and turned into the helicopter division of the company.
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