CBI officials who reached Milan on Tuesday are likely to meet Italian prosecutors from Naples who probed the `3,600-crore AgustaWestland helicopter deal on Wednesday to seek their cooperation.
Sources said the Italian prosecutors, who interrogated alleged middleman Guido Haschke Ralph, have accepted the CBI officials’ request for a meeting on Wednesday. “A CBI DIG and a law officer of the agency will meet Italian prosecutors to ascertain the details of the case,” sources said.
“It’s an important development that the Italian prosecutors have accepted our request for a meeting. Agency officials may get certain documents related to the deal from the Italian prosecutors. The Italian prosecutors are totally independent and they are not directed by ministries there,” sources said. The CBI officials will try to get the report filed by public prosecutor Eugenio Fusco, sources said, adding that the agency managed to get the 164-page report filed by Italian prosecutors through informal channels but it cannot proceed with the probe on this basis.
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Brussels: $50m diamond heist on runway
Brussels, Feb 19: Machine-gun toting robbers disguised as cops made off with $50 million worth of diamonds in a spectacular heist on the tarmac at Brussels airport, prosecutors and dealers said on Tuesday.
Monday night’s robbery at Zaventem airport was “one of the biggest” ever, said a spokeswoman for the Antwerp World Diamo-nd Centre, the global dealers’ syndicate. The raid saw a gang of eight “heavily-armed and hooded” thieves pull up on the runway in two black vehicles with blue police-like markings, Brussels prosecutors’ spokesperson Anja Bijnens told a press conference at Zaventem airport. — AFP