CBI charge: Israeli firm comes to Fernandes' aid

'Competitors in the defence export industry behind the bribery allegations'.

A day after the CBI filed an FIR against former Defence Minister George Fernandes and former naval chief Sushil Kumar on charges of corruption, former CEO of Israel Aircraft Industries' ELTA, Nino Levi, told agencies that he believed competitors in the defence export industry were behind the bribery allegations against Fernandes in the $269 million deal between India and Israel Aircraft Industries to supply the Indian navy with Barak missiles.

"The ones behind these bribery allegations implicating Israel's defence industry are the main competitors of the defence exports," Levi told the Israeli Ynet news agency.

Without naming any country, he said Israel, "which finds itself under many existential threats and which devotes a great deal of its resources towards maintaining its security, must compete with many other nations in the arms market, including countries for whom defence exports are solely a commercial pursuit. Those countries don't refrain from using political tactics to disrupt Israel."

He also said the Israeli defence industry, which is highly supervised and complicated politically, "fears like fire anything related to bribery. The fact of the report damages Israel, and whoever is behind it understands that perfectly," he said.

In Patna, Fernandes, who was there to attend a meeting today, said he had written to President APJ Abdul Kalam, demanding the dismissal of UPA government on the issue of alleged corruption.

"Transparency International, which has rated India as the worst performer on the Bribe Payer's Index (BPI), lowered India's prestige. It also suggested violation of the law and the Constitution by members of the UPA government. There cannot be anything more demeaning for our country than being a nation that has been declared as the number one corrupt nation in the world," Fernandes said.

"Please dismiss this government and order elections to relieve the country from the humility that we are presently subjected to by the corrupt establishment of the government," Fernandes said.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) said the deal should be probed impartially and with diligence. Not only should the Israeli company charged with corruption be proceeded against, it should also be prohibited from future transactions.

"The UPA government should not ignore the fact that there are widespread reports of Israeli arms companies, who have become the second largest suppliers of defence equipment to India, resorting to illegal means including bribery," a release from the party said.

Party leader Sitaram Yechury rubbished Fernandes's charge that Sonia Gandhi had anything to do with the CBI probe. "People keep talking about her," he said.

The Congress predictably criticised the vilification campaign against Sonia but said nothing about the fact that a former Chief of Naval Staff had also been implicated in the issue. Talking to some reporters. Jaya Jaitely, another former Samata Party leader named in the FIR, said the Congress was yet to outlive the ghost of Bofors.