CBI to investigate Air India $11B deal

I wonder if Sonia Ma'am and Prafull Uncle made big bucks on this deal.

Modi ji - please ensure you Govt gets to the bottom of it and put the culprits if any behind bars. End of Congress it will be

New Delhi: The civil aviation ministry in a reply to a Right to Information (RTI) application has disclosed that Air India’s controversial $11 billion deal to buy 68 Boeing aircraft in 2006 is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). The aviation ministry revealed this in a reply to an RTI application on 31 October while saying that the files related to the Boeing deal cannot be made public as “presently the case is under investigation by the CBI”. Mint has reviewed a copy of the email. Former executive director Jitender Bhargava had filed the RTI application seeking access to all the files related to the deal that was criticized by the government auditor Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG). CAG had in its report submitted to Parliament in 2011 found fault with then aviation minister Praful Patel for not supporting the airline, which has lurched from one crisis to another over the past few years and now finds itself in a debt trap, Mint reported on 9th September 2011. An email sent to Boeing spokesperson seeking comments on Friday evening did not yield any immediate response. A text message sent to Praful Patel also went unanswered. The auditor, which covered the 2002-2010 period in its review, had said in its 121-page report that Air India was forced to buy aircraft from Boeing Co. in a hurry. It also detailed events that led to the company’s ambitious $11 billion purchase on a paltry equity base of $34 million. It said that in 2004, minister Patel, “in a meeting at Mumbai, impressed upon the need for Air India to examine the possibility of non-stop India-US operations” and review its fleet acquisition plan. Thereafter, the ministry “communicated the above-mentioned decisions on 5 August 2004 to Air India and directed them to revisit the acquisition proposal and submit a fresh proposal which would include revised requirements in view of” the “new dimension in the competition on the India-US route” and launch of a no-frills airline called “Air India Express”. Interestingly, the same India-US route was one on which Air India made the highest loss among all the routes it flew in 2005-06. It lost Rs.552.44 crore in the India-US sector that year. By 2009-10, this had increased to Rs.1,522.15 crore. Air India’s financial health deteriorated gradually. In 2002-03, Air India (the combined entity of Indian Airlines and Air India) lost just Rs.63 crore. This ballooned to almost Rs.7,000 crore in 2010-11 after a much-publicized merger in 2007 that was aimed at making the airline profitable by the third year. “The above sequence of events clearly demonstrates that the erstwhile Air India was advised to revisit its proposal by” the aviation ministry “into expanding its requirement of aircraft. Whilst their earlier proposal for 28 aircraft had taken two years to prepare and submit, the revised long-term fleet for 50 aircraft plan was completed in four months”, the auditor said. Patel had denied all the charges made by CAG then. Air India has, since the aircraft deal and a botched merger, slipped into a debt trap of more than $6 billion and is undergoing a nearly $3.5 billion government bailout. Bhargava said he has filed an appeal to review the files anyway. “They can only deny inspection if they can establish that it will impede. My take is that it wouldn’t. I will file an appeal with the appellate authority. If it is rejected by the ministry, I will go to CIC. I had started obtaining documents through RTI to substantiate contents of my book challenged by Praful Patel in the criminal defamation case,” Bhargava said on Friday.

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