{"id":17790,"date":"2018-01-08T16:11:36","date_gmt":"2018-01-08T16:11:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/punjabnews24.com\/?p=17790"},"modified":"2018-01-08T16:11:36","modified_gmt":"2018-01-08T16:11:36","slug":"no-corruption-says-italy-court-acquits-2-main-accused-in-agusta-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/no-corruption-says-italy-court-acquits-2-main-accused-in-agusta-case\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;No Corruption&#8217;, Says Italy Court, Acquits 2 Main Accused In Agusta Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n&#8220;A separate investigation into suspected corruption and money laundering is still on in India&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/strong>New Delhi: An Italian court today let off the two main accused in a bribery scandal related to the contract for AgustaWestland VVIP choppers, signed when a Congress government was in power. Giuseppe Orsi and Bruno Spagnolini were acquitted by an appeals court that said there wasn&#8217;t sufficient proof of corruption.<\/p>\n<p>In a judgement read out in the Apellate court of Milan, the judge made a brief statement that said the two had been cleared of both charges &#8211; bribery and fraud accounting.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Orsi&#8217;s lawyer Ennio Amodio said the judge &#8220;found no evidence of corruption, of the passage of money or that Indian officials interfered with the tender&#8221;. The decision, he said, closed a case &#8220;which should have been clear to investigators (from the start)&#8221;.<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- punjabnews24 --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6565419310935097\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"6948863062\"\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script>The Central Bureau of Investigation, which is pursuing the case, said the acquittal will have &#8220;no impact on our case&#8221;. &#8220;Italian authorities can appeal against the acquittal Giuseppe Orsi and Bruno Spagnolini in Supreme Court of Italy. Our investigation is independent &#038; we have strong case against both of them,&#8221; the agency said.  <\/p>\n<p>Mr Orsi, former chief executive of the Italian state-controlled defence group Finmeccanica, later renamed Leonardo, was arrested in 2014 and had been sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail on charges of false accounting and bribery.<\/p>\n<p>Bruno Spagnolini, the former head of Finmeccanica&#8217;s helicopter unit AgustaWestland, was also handed a four-year jail term.<\/p>\n<p>The case involves a 2007 contract signed by the government for the sale of 12 luxury helicopters for use by top leaders, including the President, Prime Minister and former prime ministers.<script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- punjabnews24 --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-6565419310935097\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"6948863062\"\n     data-ad-format=\"auto\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script>In 2013, the government scrapped the contract amid allegations of kickbacks amounting to Rs 362 crore paid by Finmeccanica &#8212; with Orsi and Spagnolini at the helm &#8212; to influence the deal.<\/p>\n<p>The BJP had alleged that the initials &#8220;AP&#8221; found in the notes of a middleman referred to Ahmed Patel, Congress leader Sonia Gandhi&#8217;s close aide.<\/p>\n<p>In December 2016, Italy&#8217;s highest court ordered a retrial of the case after Orsi and Spagnolini&#8217;s conviction by a lower court was found to be erroneous.<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;A separate investigation into suspected corruption and money laundering is still on in India&#8221; New Delhi: An Italian court today let off the two main accused in a bribery scandal related to the contract for AgustaWestland VVIP choppers, signed when a Congress government was in power. Giuseppe Orsi and Bruno Spagnolini were acquitted by an [&hellip;]<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17791,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[312,315,87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-top-stories","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17792,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17790\/revisions\/17792"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}