Corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar, who was earlier in the judicial custody of the Enforcement Directorate, was today arrested by the CBI. A Delhi court had rejected his anticipatory bail plea in the CBI case against him.
A Delhi Court dismisses Corporate Lobbyist Deepak Talwar’s anticipatory bail application in the CBI case against him. CBI has also sought 14 day custody of Talwar (file pic) pic.twitter.com/UmuJC46dLB
— ANI (@ANI) July 26, 2019
The CBI had sought 14 days of judicial custody of the aviation lobbyist Deepak Talwar, who is accused of receiving kickbacks from foreign airlines for his suspicious role in brokering dubious aviation deals during the UPA era. CBI seeks to examine and confront Talwar with voluminous documents. The judge has reserved the order on the duration of the judicial custody post-lunch.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) had earlier found dubious deposits alleged to be the kickbacks paid by the international airlines into several accounts of extradited Congress era lobbyist Deepak Talwar. The ED had discovered Rs 270 crores deposited in Bank of Singapore by international airlines and another Rs 88 crore received in his NGO to influence some top ministers and bureaucrats in the previous UPA regime, reported Times of India.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has also alleged that the ‘corporate lobbyist’, Deepak Talwar, who was involved in several aviation deals during the UPA regime, acted as a middleman in negotiations to favour foreign private airlines causing the loss to national carrier Air India. According to ED, Talwar received a huge amount of money in his bank accounts deposited by various airlines for allegedly compromising lucrative routes and flying destinations of India’s national carrier Air India and thus immensely benefitting foreign airlines.
The preliminary investigation by the Enforcement Directorate had revealed that three years after the Indian Airlines inked a deal to buy 43 aircraft from Airbus, the aircraft manufacturer floated a shell company based out of Singapore in partnership with the middleman Deepak Talwar and, another three years later, transferred USD 10.5 million in its accounts in two tranches.
The middleman Deepak Talwar, along with another high-profile fugitive, Rakesh Saxena, was extradited from UAE in the same plane of the government of India on January 30, 2019. Before that, the middleman in VVIP chopper scam Christian Michel was also extradited to India. Michel, in his deposition, had named a certain Italian Lady and ‘Italian Lady’s son R’ in the AgustaWestland scam.
