With Army Chief Gen V K Singh raking up the issue of alleged bribes in procurement of Tatra trucks, the CBI is probing alleged irregularities in the procurement of trucks.
It is probing into alleged irregularities in assigning of supply from Czech Republic-based Tatra, with which the agreement was originally signed in 1986, to the Tatra Sipox UK owned by Ravi Rishi in 1997, showing it as Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and the fully-owned subsidiary of the Czech company.
There were allegations in 2005 that Tatra family of trucks were being procured from an agent and not not directly from OEM and that BEML was at best an assembler of such vehicles without absorbing technology.
In the wake of these allegations, the Defence Ministry had gone into the matter and apparently found that there was nothing wrong in procuring components from the intermediary company.
Before coming to this conclusion, the Ministry got a letter from the Indian ambassador in Slovakia about the ownership of the Tatra Sipox UK company.
According to official documents accessed by PTI after a recent review of the issue, the Ambassador had reported in 2005 that Tatra Sipox company was set up to resolve coordination issues arising out of division of the country Czechoslovakia into Czech and Slovak republics resulting in the division of the company producing these trucks. (More) PTI AJD AKK VSC