Last week, in the Embraer case, the ED attached Rs 15 crore of assets in Sangrur, the constituency once represented by Khanna’s son in the Punjab assembly. Investigators are zeroing in on Khanna’s involvement in the Embraer aircraft deal and his connections in Congress which allegedly helped him swing the deal in favour of Embraer and the subsequent payoff of Rs 26 crore

NEW DELHI: A crucial Indian link in the Iraqi oil-for-food scam, which hit Congress in 2005 and led to then foreign minister Natwar Singh's exit, has resurfaced with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) once again on the trail of defence dealer Vipin Khanna. And this time too, some top functionaries of the party are under scrutiny for the Embraer defence deal with Brazil signed in 2008. 

Last week, in the Embraer case, the ED attached Rs 15 crore of assets in Sangrur, the constituency once represented by Khanna’s son in the Punjab assembly. Investigators are zeroing in on Khanna’s involvement in the Embraer aircraft deal and his connections in Congress which allegedly helped him swing the deal in favour of Embraer and the subsequent payoff of Rs 26 crore. Sources said Khanna was merely a front and the real beneficiaries were yet to be identified. 

Embraer is one of the three defence deals during the UPA regime in which money laundering probes have been initiated by the ED. The agency has so far tracked more than Rs 760 crore in alleged kickbacks received by defence dealers in the three multi-million dollar defence deals — Rs 26 crore alleged kickbacks in the Embraer deal, Rs 423 crore in the AgustaWestland chopper deal and Rs 310 crore in the Pilatus aircraft purchase from Switzerland. 

The Embraer deal was signed during the UPA tenure in 2008. In the three-aircraft deal for the airborne radar system of the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the agency has claimed payoffs of more than $5 million. The CBI had last year registered an FIR and named Khanna as the defence agent who received bribes in the $208 million deal. 

The ED has named another defence dealer, Sanjay Bhandari, linked to Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Sonia Gandhi, in the Pilatus bribery case. Bhandari allegedly received around Rs 310 crore in kickbacks for the 75 aircraft deal signed by the UPA government with Pilatus of Switzerland in 2009-10. 

In the AgustaWestland case, the ED in its charge sheets claimed that bribes of Rs 423 crore were paid to middlemen. The agency received some crucial information while interrogating Rajiv Saxena, a bribery accused turned approver in the case. 

Saxena had submitted a diary to the ED having details on how the Rs 423 crore kickbacks in the VVIP chopper deal moved from the UK subsidiary of the Finmeccanica, the Italian manufacturer of the helicopters, to shell companies in Tunisia and from there to Mauritius, Dubai, Swiss banks and finally to the end beneficiaries. Saxena had told his investigating officers that he “merely acted as a front” for some politicians.