YSR’s name surfaces in Augusta Westland scam

An Italian court indicated the involvement of Sonia Gandhi in Augusta Westland scam which is shaking the parliament and now the roots of the scam reached former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, YS Rajasekhar Reddy and his son-in-law, Anil. The middleman in the multi-crore scam, is associated with Arbor Charitable Foundation India – a Christian missionary and service organisation based at Karunagiri of Naidupet block in Khammam district.

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The then YSR Government on the insistence of its Congress bosses, allotted about 2,000 acres of land to the foundation at a nominal cost to run its activities, which include community-based programmes, microfinance, water management and sanitation, housing and child welfare programmes. The middleman, Carlo Gerosa got immensely benefitted from the deal and is as director of the foundation in Khammam in 2008.

The foundation had links to Brother Anil Kumar and YSR promoted it as a result. Interestingly, YSR government back then bought on of the Augusta Westland chopper at a cost of Rs 63 crore, though a Bell-430 chopper bought in June 1999 was already there for the CM, but after a little over an year, YSR was killed in September 2009 in a helicopter crash.