While prosecutors chose to describe him as a “thoroughbred” fixer, Michel has made no bones in admitting that he dreads Indian jails

For nearly six years, ever since the VVIP chopper scandal surfaced, Christian Michel James managed to successfully play a “catch me if you can” with Indian and Italian sleuths.

Thanks to Indian prosecutors’ dogged pursuit of the alleged fixer, in what is seen as a major victory for the Modi government, the British national was brought to Delhi from Dubai on the night of December 4. He is believed to be a key middleman in India’s deal to buy a dozen aircraft for VVIP travel from AgustaWestland, the UK helicopter unit of Italy’s Finmeccanica.

Credit it to the intimidating presence of two Dubai police officials, Michel behaved like a well-disciplined student en-route to India. But it took him no time to turn aggressive the moment he landed in the exclusive custody of Indian sleuths. Since then a “non-cooperative”, as the CBI chose to describe him, Michel has been made to field a volley of questions by the officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation and now by the Enforcement Directorate.

Based on the arguments of the agencies in court seeking his custody, documents related to a court order in Italy and accounts of people with knowledge of the investigation, ET examines whether Michel’s “answers” have changed the contours of the probe into the Rs 3,600-crore scandal. 

Demand For Remand

In all (three, so far) its remand applications, the CBI maintained that Michel remained “evasive” and deliberately “misled” the investigators. In its applications on December 5, 10 and 15 — all three first reported by ET — the CBI sought his custody to probe the role of other accused foreigners, Michel’s handwriting specimens and alleged payments of about Rs 92 lakh made to two air force officials for airfare.

The 14-day-long questioning by the CBI also threw up alleged proximity of Michel’s father Wolfgang with former PM Indira Gandhi. According to Michel, Indira told Parliament that “Wolfgang is a friend of India”. The CBI sought to peruse the records of Parliament to verify the authenticity of the claim.

Missing Link


Notwithstanding the questioning, unavailability of “key documents” pertaining to the money trail of Michel’s two companies — Global Services FZE (Dubai) and Global Trade and Commerce Services (London) — is making it difficult for the investigators to confront him on the “distribution of kickbacks”. However, the agencies — CBI and ED — are hopeful that the relevant documents would shortly be made available by Dubai authorities.

The CBI is allegedly relying on photocopied documents to compare his handwriting. His lawyers have made a claim that the Indian government’s letters rogatory seeking original documents from the Italian government was turned down in 2017.

According to forensic experts, comparison of handwriting on the basis of photocopied documents would pose a challenge in giving a “conclusive finding”. In the absence of original documents, they contend, it would be difficult to reach a definite conclusion. The investigators, however, are hopeful of a breakthrough.

Handwriting Issues

Of the three alleged middlemen — the others being Carlo Gerosa and Guido Ralph Haschke — Michel remains crucial and the most controversial. Investigators see a link between him and a handwritten “budget sheet” which contains acronyms like “AP and fam”. While the BJP alleges that these entries refer to Congress leader Ahmed Patel and the Gandhi family, an Italian court had flatly refused to rely on the sheet, acquitting former AgustaWestland and Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi and his successor at the helicopter unit, S Bruno, who were probed for alleged irregularities in the deal.

Michel has so far maintained that he did not author the so-called budget sheet. Haschke, one of the other two middlemen, in his plea bargain statement before the Italian court had claimed that he wrote the sheet but on the dictation of Michel. However, Haschke has added that even Michel had no clue about the abbreviations since they were “hypothetical”. Michel had taken the defence that he was dyslexic and incapable of cursive handwriting. The CBI, on the other hand, suspects that Michel had written some key documents containing entries detailing beneficiaries of alleged kickbacks. To confront him on this, the agency has got his handwriting specimens. Michel has remained extra cautious in perusing all documents before commenting on those.

Under The Lens

Moving beyond the budget sheet, the agencies are focused on the distribution of alleged kickbacks, the recipients, and their political and bureaucratic connections in India, especially in the Ministry of Defence and the Indian Air Force. For, Michel has revealed that he had hired a “team of retired IAF, MoD and navy officials to get information about the defence market situation in India and progress of the procurement of VVIP helicopters”.

Under the scanner are 18 companies and individuals who Michel claimed to have paid more than €6.2 million on account of “consultancy and other services”. CBI’s preliminary investigation has discovered that Michel made false claims. Around half a dozen of the alleged recipients, when quizzed by the CBI, flatly denied receipt of any money.

“Thus, it is established that kickbacks/commissions were paid by Michel James to other accomplices in the guise of consultancy charges and his replies to the material questions are evasive and misguiding,” the CBI told the court.

Agustawestland’s Audit Trouble

According to the CBI, when auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers found “serious deviations” in the transfer of money from AgustaWestland to Michel’s companies and recommended an “extensive audit,” the company chose two “independent” auditors to do a “whitewash”, rather than giving the mandate to PwC. However, CBI’s special prosecutor Davinder Pal Singh told the court, one of the “independent” auditors, Giorgio Casana, raised eyebrows over payments of €34 million to Michel’s companies.

No Italian Roadblock

While Michel has chosen to seek refuge in the Italian court judgement which acquitted Orsi and Bruno in January this year, the CBI and Enforcement Directorate are clear that the judgement would not put a spoke in their wheel.

The agencies contend that the interpretation by the Italian court was full of errors and secondly, the judgement was not a binding one on the Indian courts, a question which the special CBI judge had also raised when Michel’s lawyer had sought to argue that Michel stood “exonerated”.

The Italian judgement remotely touches upon the role of Michel in the entire deal. The ruling has devoted barely three pages on “Michel’s World”. Most significantly, Michel was never a party to the prosecution launched in Italy. With Michel in Indian custody, his lawyers have heavily relied upon the judgement to seek bail for Michel.

Pawan Hans ‘Deal’: A Deal-Breaker

According to the CBI, Michel executed five “sham” contracts as an alibi to receive money from AgustaWestland. The funds were allegedly used to pay kickbacks to officers in the Indian Air Force, defence ministry, bureaucrats and politicians during the UPA regime, the CBI claims.

Michel has not denied drafting dispatch sheets pertaining to those “sham” contracts which were executed 12 times by him at different points of time to receive more than €42 million from Finmeccanica, the parent of AgustaWestland. The dispatch sheets contain references to a number of contracts, pertaining to the defence sector, which Michel claimed to be negotiating. The CBI claims that these contracts were fake and meant to pay bribes. Of the five, one contract pertained to the buyback of 14 WG-30 helicopters from Pawan Hans. This was a purported deal struck between AgustaWestland and Pawan Hans in 2008. Owing to poor performance of the helicopters, AgustaWestland claimed to have decided to buyback 14 of those from the state-run company. Michel had drawn one “sham” contract claiming to facilitate the buyback of these helicopters in lieu of which he was paid money by AgustaWestland.

The CBI quizzed officials of Pawan Hans in Mumbai who revealed that their company was completely unaware of any such contracts to buyback helicopters by AgustaWestland.

Scared of Jail

While prosecutors chose to describe him as a “thoroughbred” fixer, Michel has made no bones in admitting that he dreads Indian jails. So much so that citing his fear, Michel in one of the “informal” conversations with Indian delegates in Dubai had sought to explore a “middle house” in lieu of not getting extradited to India. His worst fears came true after the Enforcement Directorate decided to await a few days before seeking his police remand, a move which people with direct knowledge of the matter suggest was a “strategy”. With CBI’s questioning over, Michel is now being confronted by the ED. With the court refusing to grant bail to Michel, the ED is all set to seek further remand of him on Saturday.