Milan/New Delhi: Italian defence and aerospace major Finmeccanica’s former chief Giuseppe Orsi has been sentenced by the Milan appeals court to 4.5 years in jail for false accounting and corruption in the sale of 12 VVIP choppers to India for over Rs 3,600 crore.
In the ruling, which overturned a previous court order of 2014 that had given Orsi reprieve in connection with the corruption angle, former CEO of Finmeccanica’s helicopter subsidiary AgustaWest-land, Bruno Spagnolini, was also handed a four-year prison term by the court on Thursday.
The court found both guilty of corruption in relation to the sale of 12 helicopters to the Indian government and sentenced Orsi to a jail term of four and a half years, Italian news agency ANSA reported. Prosecutors had requested jail terms of six years and five years for Orsi and Spagnolini, respectively.
Though Finmeccanica has refused to say anything on the ruling saying it pertained to former executives, top company officials said the firm “has changed completely”.
The CBI and the ED are still probing the case in India in which former Indian Air Force chief S.P. Tyagi and his cousins are alleged to be the beneficiaries. The ED had attached five expensive flats in and around New Delhi in the name of cousins of Tyagi in connection with its money laundering probe.
