New Delhi: CBI has forwarded to the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) the summons to be served abroad to three officials of Switzerland-based Swiss Timing Limited for their alleged role in a 2010 Commonwealth Games related corruption case in which Suresh Kalmadi among others is facing trial. The agency has filed the copy of the March 26 letter sent to the MHA before a Delhi court after it had directed the CBI to submit its status report in connection with the service of summons by March 28.
In its forwarding letter sent to MHA, the CBI has given brief details of the case and has annexed copies of summons issued for July 2, 2013 against Swiss Timing's General Manager Christophe Berthaud, Sales and Marketing Manager S Chianese and Multi Sports Events and Sales Manager J Spiri. "The summons in duplicate, accompanied by its annexures...duly issued by the trial court and their German translations along with translation certificates dated March 19, 2013 are enclosed herewith for service as per the letters of agreement dated February 20, 1989 between the Governments of India and Switzerland in the matter of providing mutual assistance in criminal matters," the letter sent by the CBI to the ministry said.
"It is further mentioned that the summons need to be received by Federal Department of Justice and Police, Switzerland thirty days prior to the date of the summons for onward service to the addressee," the letter said. Swiss Timing, along with sacked CWG Organising Committee (OC) chairman Suresh Kalmadi and nine others, is facing trial in a case relating to "illegally" awarding a contract to install Timing, Scoring and Results (TSR) system for the 2010 Games to Swiss Timing Ltd at inflated rates, causing a loss of over Rs 95 crore to the exchequer.
The court had framed charges of cheating and conspiracy against Swiss Timing and had said the record of the case "prima facie" suggests that there are "incriminating evidence about the involvement" of its three officials in the case. Special CBI Judge Ravinder Kaur had issued summons against the three officials of the firm and had directed the agency to file a chargesheet against them.
The agency had filed the summons along with a brief note of the case, after they were translated into German language, in the court which then handed it over to CBI prosecutor VK Sharma to send them to the accused through the Federal Department of Justice and Police of Swiss Confederation. While directing CBI to file a chargesheet against the three persons, the court had said the name of a person, who had allegedly acted and entered into a criminal conspiracy on behalf of Swiss Timing Ltd with the other accused, is not there in the charge sheet.
It had also said the material available on record "speaks of the criminal conspiracy entered into between accused no 1 to 10 (Kalmadi and others) and accused no. 11 (Swiss Timing Ltd) through Spiri, Chianese and Berthaud." Kalmadi and nine others, including OC's former Secretary General Lalit Bhanot, are facing trial in the case for offences including criminal conspiracy, forgery, cheating under the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act, which entails life imprisonment as maximum punishment.
Besides Kalmadi and Bhanot, the other accused are OC's former Director General VK Verma, former Director General (Procurement) Surjit Lal, former Joint Director General (Sports) ASV Prasad and former Treasurer M Jayachandran. They are no more associated with the sporting body.
Apart from the six, promoters of two construction firms - PD Arya and AK Madan of Faridabad-based Gem International and AK Reddy of Hyderabad-based AKR Constructions - are also accused. AKR Constructions is also an accused in the case.
CBI has alleged that Kalmadi and others rejected Spanish firm MSL's much lower bid of Rs 62 crore and awarded the contract to Swiss Timing, causing a loss to the exchequer.
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