Indefensible Defence - Implosion: India's Tryst with Reality - page 238

since then that they do not - or should not - exist. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in
2006 that, since agents could not be eliminated, they should perhaps be recognized. As in-
creasingly became the case with his remarks, however, no one did anything. 67 General V.P.
Malik, a former chief of army staff, said that foreign firms in particular 'needed someone
they can authorize and say is their agent'. But the present muddle suits the vested interests,
who seem not to want to register and formalize their work. It also benefits other players in
the defence establishment - and enables successive governments to embarrass their prede-
cessors with allegations of corruption.
The main agent named in the Bofors case was Win Chaddha and his Delhi-based com-
pany Anatronic. Admiral S.M. Nanda, a high-profile and controversial chief of naval staff
from 1970 to 1973, who led the bombing of the Pakistani city of Karachi in the 1971 India-
Pakistan war, 68 was named (though he denied involvement) in the HDW scandal that arose
after German officials told India a seven per cent commission had been paid to agents. 69
When he left the navy, Nanda headed the state-owned Shipping Corporation of India and
then, after retirement, he founded a firm that initially dealt with offshore oil drilling and en-
gineering deals, and later broadened into defence. His companies were called GlobalTech,
Crown Corporation and Eureka and he was joined by his son Suresh, also a former Indian
navy officer. In 2003, the family bought Claridges, a medium-sized up-market colonial-
style hotel in central Delhi for Rs 930 crore (then about $25m) and three other hotels.
Also well known is Sudhir 'Bunny' Choudhrie, whose family originally worked with the
Nandas and who figured in the Tehelka sting. London-based, he has close links with Is-
raeli defence companies and with Russia's Sukhoi aircraft manufacturer, 70 and was named
in 2013 in Italian courts as an agent for Finmeccanica on the VVIP helicopter corrup-
tion scandal involving Finmeccanica's Augusta Westland company. 71 He was one of the
early investors in Air Deccan, 72 a short-lived budget airline, and in Alpha Technologies,
a Bengaluru-based defence equipment manufacturer with Israeli and other joint ventures.
His C&C Alpha Group has real estate and hotel businesses. 73 He hit UK news headlines

(including a BBC television programme) 74 in 2010 for having donated £750,000 to the

Liberal-Democratic Party.
Others involved in defence deals include the London-based India-born (originally Iran-
based), Hinduja family, whose name was linked to the Bofors and HDW deals, though they
denied involvement. In Delhi, prominent names include Chetan Seth, a garrulous Delhi
partygoer who is best known as India's only Cuban cigar importer and runs the Chemon
Group that combines a foreign agent's work with production of defence equipment. They
also include Vipin Khanna and Abhishek Verma, who was jailed for two years over leaks
from the Indian navy. Verma has since then figured in various defence deals with German,
Israeli and other companies and has been charged for revealing secret information. 75