File photo of AW101 helicopter

New Delhi, May 11

Chirstian Michel, a suspected middleman in the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland helicopter deal, on Wednesday said that he had never met Congress President Sonia Gandhi or the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to push for the purchase of VVIP choppers.

“No, never,” was the prompt reply of Michel when he was asked whether he had ever met Gandhi, Singh or then Defence Minister AK Antony for pushing the deal.

“I have never met any of these,” he said in an interview to ‘TV Today’ news channel in Abu Dhabi.

Michel sought to clear his name from the kickbacks scam claiming that he had “once” shaken hands with the then IAF Chief SP Tyagi in Delhi but “avoided him” for his links with Italian businessman Guido Haschke and another middleman.

“I probably met him (SP Tyagi) at Gymkhana club and I think I shook his hand there. But because of his association with Haschke, I really avoided him,” he said.

He also said that BJP Parliamentarian Subramanian Swamy has not lied about the deal but it seems he has been misled.

“He has authenticated (documents) what was given in the CAG report. The CAG report was prepared in great hurry as the deal was always blowing away.

“They (CAG) are not aviation experts and they are bureaucrats asked to put together document way beyond their expertise. So he was misled by his own documentation,” he said.

The VVIP choppers deal probe has shed light on the involvement of three suspected middlemen — Carlo Gerosa, Guido Haschke and Michel — in swinging the deal in favour of UK-based AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of Italian firm Finmeccanica.

Investigating agencies are inquiring into their role in payment of bribes and extension of favours by the company to clinch the multi-million dollar deal.

On January 1, 2014, India cancelled the contract with the company over alleged breach of contractual obligations and charges of paying kickbacks of Rs 423 crore by it for securing the deal. — Agencies