Italy’s supreme court has suspended a sentence handed to the former boss of aerospace and defence group Finmeccanica, Giuseppe Orsi, for false accounting and corruption in connection with the sale of 12 luxury helicopters to India, Italian media reported.
The court ordered a retrial in the case on Friday after it found procedural errors in the sentence handed by the Milan appeals court in April this year. The defence and the prosecution cited differences in the April sentence from earlier rulings.
In April, Orsi was sentenced to four-a-half-years years in jail. Bruno Spagnolini, former head of AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of Finmeccanica, was also handed a four-year jail term on the same charges. The pair had been sentenced to two years in prison in October 2014 for false accounting.
Former IAF Chief SP Tyagi To Be Produced in Court on Friday
The court of cassation has referred the case back to the appeals tribunal. Italian media believe that the case will be closed when the statute of limitation expires in March 2017.
The case against Orsi and Spagnolini resulted from an investigation launched in 2012 into the sale of 12 luxury helicopters to India's government. Orsi was arrested in 2014 and resigned as chief executive of the aerospace group a short while later.
India cancelled the deal with AgustaWestland in January 2014 amid allegations that the company paid bribes to win the $753 million contract.
Former IAF chief SP Tyagi, accused of receiving kickbacks, was arrested along with his two aides and are in CBI’s custody. He will be produced in the Patiala House Court on Saturday.
(With inputs from PTI.)
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