Team Anna alleges corruption in defence deals, names MP's son

New Delhi: India Against Corruption (IAC) members Arvind Kejriwal and Prashant Bhushan today alleged that kickbacks are paid in many defence deals in India and said that they had documentary evidence of an alleged middleman’s involvement in manipulating deals. They alleged that Abhishek Verma, son of Congress MPs Shrikant Verma and Veena Verma, is a middle man in numerous defense deals and had received kickbaks in some cases. Abhishek, an accused in the Navy war room leak case, is out on bail since 2008. The two social activists today released a set of documents titled “Government of India- a well oiled commission raj”, containing material handed over to them by a US based attorney named C Edmond Allen. [caption id=“attachment_289937” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“The group India Against Corruption released documents related to kickbacks being given in defence deals. PTI”]  [/caption] In December 2010, India imposed anti-dumping duty of $ 100 million on Israeli firm ECI Telecom. According to the documents, ECI Telecom approached Ganton Limited, allegedly a front for Verma, to get the anti-dumping duty rolled back. The documents contain a copy of an email allegedly written by Verma to an ECI representative on 11 December 2011, around a month before Minister for External Affairs SM Krishna visited Israel. In the email, Abhishek assured the company that Krishna would recommend anti-dumping duty be rolled back. “The language of this email gives an impression as if Abhishek Verma has been able to fix the Foreign Affairs Minister. His tall claims in this email need to be verified. If true, they are quite serious,” said Prashant Bhushan. Another allegation against Verma was that his firm took $ 5,30,000 from Rheinmetall RAD, a German based company to get its name removed from the list of blacklisted firms in India. Allen, who has provided the documents, used to be Verma’s business partner in the US. However, in 2010, the two fell out and since then Allen has written to various investigating agencies in India, giving them evidence against Verma. “Our verification confirmed that these bodies did receive Allen’s complaints,” Bhushan said. About the authenticity of the documents, Bhushan said that he was not certain about it. “If these documents are genuine, then the crimes alleged to have committed are so serious, that it would be criminal for us to keep quiet,” said he.