Team Anna alleges kickbacks in India's major deals

New Delhi, April 26 (IANS) Team Anna Thursday released a set of documents that allude to "kickbacks and money laundering" in several defence and commercial deals of the Indian government, alleging that top government functionaries were aware of these.

The team also alleged the involvement of an accused in the Naval War Room leak case in these deals, as indicated by these documents, though they did not want to take responsibility for the authenticity of the documents or the veracity of their contents.

The documents indicated that certain foreign companies doing business in India had approached a middleman in India, asking him to deal with top government functionaries on issues ranging from roll back of anti-dumping duty to getting their names removed from the list of banned companies.

"We received documents from a US citizen C. Edmonds Allen, who claimed to have entered into an agreement with the Naval War Room leak case accused to secure the money earned from these deals. And after the two had a fallout, Allen has sent these documents to us," said Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal at a press conference here.

Referring to the documents, copies of which were circulated to the media, Kejriwal alleged that an Israeli firm had promised $1 million to the Indian representative if the anti-dumping duty of $100 million imposed on it is rolled back.

A total of 112 pages, Kejriwal claimed, were written by the Indian middleman to the Israeli company.

Kejriwal also claimed that the Indian middleman was aware of a top minister's visit to Israel in early January 2012 and that "he will recommend anti-dumping rollback" after the Israeli authorities raise it.

"The letter raises suspicion that even the government's top brass can be fixed and the middlemen can influence mega defence deal," he said.

"The middleman took $530,000 from Rheinmetall RAD to get its name removed from the list of blacklisted firms in India," Kejriwal said.

Rheinmetall Air Defence AG is a Swiss defence firm which the Indian government had decided to ban from future deals following its naming in a chargesheet relating to a graft case against former Ordnance Factory Board director general Sudipto Ghosh.