By IANS,
New Delhi: A Delhi court Tuesday gave copies of the charge sheet to five accused in a case of alleged financial irregularities in awarding a Rs.141-crore contract for timing, scoring and result (TSR) system for the 2010 Commonwealth Games (CWG), paving the way for the trial to begin. The highlights of the charge sheet are:
– Former CWG Organising Committee (OC) chief and parliament member Suresh Kalmadi, former secretary general Lalit Bhanot, former director general V.K. Verma, former deputy director general (procurement) Surjeet Lal and former joint director general (sports) A.S.V. Prasad committed forgeries and abused their official position and entered into criminal conspiracy with Swiss Timing Ltd. and other unknown people to cheat the government in awarding contract for the TSR system.
– Kalmadi was enjoying supreme and overriding powers. The government had no role in selection of its founding members, nor was there any approval.
– Swiss Timing had been engaged for providing TSR services even during the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Games.
– Gem International paid over Rs.73 lakh to Wizcraft International at the behest of Kalmadi for certain “additional services”. This amount was not routed through the OC, as per the norm. Hence, Gem International obliged Kalmadi by going out-of-the-way to make a payment on his asking.
– In furtherance of the criminal conspiracy and to defeat the intent of fair and objective method of procurement as suggested by the government, Bhanot, Lal and Verma conspired to preclude other suppliers and select only Swiss Timing as the TSR system vendor.
– To cause favour to Swiss Timing, the criteria laid down by the accused, in the ads for the TSR system, was “vague and generic”. It “fraudulently” mentioned that “only Swiss Timing Omega” met all the criteria. However, there were other suppliers who had provided the TSR system in the last three editions of Olympics, CWG and the Asian Games.
– The entire exercise of criteria, issuance of ads, processing, presentation and passing of bills was willfully done by the accused by keeping in dark the other committees, committing forgeries and falsifications.
– The accused officials of the OC arranged visits of officials of Swiss Timing and officials of Gem International to various stadia along with venue owners, even before the ad was issued inviting vendors’ proposals for supplying the TSR system.
– Investigation has led to the recovery of DVDs which have recordings in which Kalmadi and Verma declared that the TSR system would be provided by Swiss Timing, even when not a single bid in this context was received. Not from Swiss Timing too.
– Investigations reveal that A.K.R Constructions, an accused firm, had no experience in laying cables as it was a civil contractor company. No work was executed by A.K.R. Constructions and the cabling was done only by Gem International.