NEW DELHI: In a setback to Central Bureau of Investigation, a Delhi court on Wednesday acquitted controversial arms agent Abhishek Verma and his wife Anca Maria in a case involving alleged payments made to influence the Ministry of Defence in 2011 to lift blacklisting ban from a German defence firm.
The case was one of the many cases Verma is facing including Official Secret Act. CBI had conducted a five year long investigation into tracking banking transactions from Europe to the US, linking Verma with the German defence conglomerate Rheinmetall to trace the linages with the bribery scandal..
Rheinmetall was accused by the CBI of paying Verma over $5,30,000 (Rs 3.4 crore) to get it off a Defence Ministry blacklist proceedings initiated by the government against it after the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) scam had surfaced.
“Material on record does not suggest that prima facie case is made out against any of the accused and therefore, they deserve to be discharged,” says Anju Bajaj Chandna, Special Judge, in Patiala House court, Delhi.
Verma got bail in October last year after spending four years in jail in connection multiple cases registered against him and his Romanian-origin wife by investigating agency including the Official Secret Act.
It is noted that German firm Rheinmetall is already facing cases case of corruption charges, including a sale of tanks to Greece in 2009 where the arms company admitted to paying bribes worth $127 m in an out of court settlement with the prosecutors.
CBI in its chargesheet had said that blacklisting of Rheinmettal Air Defence (RAD) was recommended by the CBI and while the matter of blacklisting was under process, accused Abhishek Verma, assured representatives of RAD to help, by influencing the public servants to stall the process of blacklisting.