New Delhi: Contrary to reports that former director with Aeromatrix Gautam Khaitan held $145,000 of Abhishek Verma’s money for disposal, documents available with the Enforcement Directorate (ED) show that it is Verma who owes Khaitan money.
In a reply filed with the ED, which has been investigating Verma’s dealings under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), Khaitan has said that the war room leak case accused still owes him Rs 5.32 lakh for legal services his firm provided to Verma in a case he had fought against BSNL in 2004.
Quoting from Italian investigations into the alleged kickbacks paid to middlemen to push through Finmeccanica’s VVIP chopper deal in India, media reports cited a letter allegedly written by Delhi-based lawyer Khaitan on behalf of his law firm, O P Khaitan & Co, to Atlas Interactive Ltd (AIL) in Mauritius, a Verma-owned firm. The letter said that Khaitan told AIL that his company was holding accounts of $145,000 each on behalf of AIL and that he would "dispose" of these funds as per instructions once he returned to Delhi.
While the authenticity of this letter is still being probed, ED documents show that while Verma has had links with Khaitan, he has failed to clear the latter’s dues. ED had summoned Khaitan last September to quiz him on his links with Verma and the payments he had received from him.
Khaitan had replied last October that his firm had represented AIL in Delhi HC and Arbitral Tribunal in a dispute that had arisen between Atlas Interactive (India) Pvt Ltd and BSNL over a 2004 Franchisee Agreement for providing broadband services to BSNL’s landline users in Noida, Ghaziabad, Faridabad and Gurgaon.
In 2006, a reply furnished to the CBI following a similar query had said, “The matter was attended by us on behalf of Atlas before Arbitral Tribunal only on five occasions… The matter, thereafter, was not attended by us as we were proving too expensive for Atlas. In fact, our bills to the tune of Rs 5.75 lakh are still pending besides issuance of TDS certificate.” The outstanding was, however, revised to Rs 5.32 lakh in Khaitan’s reply to the ED last year.
COURTESY:
Deeptiman Tiwary TNN
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