Swiss justice comes to CBI aid; summons Swiss Timing

NEW DELHI: The Federal Department of Justice and Police of Switzerland has served summons on Swiss Timing, the firm accused of conspiring with the Commonwealth Games Organising Committee brass for wangling a contract for installing the timing, scoring and result (TSR) system at various venues.

This is a major boost to CBI’s attempts to seek an expeditious trial in the TSR scam. The chargesheet, filed on May 20, has named Swiss Timing and eight others as accused in the scam. OC boss Suresh Kalmadi is the ‘main conspirator.’

The contract worth Rs141 crore was awarded to Swiss Timing, even though the only other bidder, MSLSpain, had quoted just Rs46 crore for the project. The Spanish firm had successfully installed TSR infrastructure at the Guangzhou Asian Games held soon after the Commonwealth Games.

According to the CBI chargesheet, CWG Organising Committee caused a loss of Rs96 crore to the state exchequer by awarding the contract to Swiss Timing. According to CBI, Kalmadi and his associates had decided on conferring the contract to Swiss Timing even before the tender was floated.

Even the terms of the contract were changed after its issuance to specifically benefit the Swiss firm. “They (the officials) had a design to give contract to Swiss Timing, much before Expression of Interest and Request for Proposal was issued and they had done forgeries, manipulations and machinations to give award to the Switzerlandbased based company,’’ the chargesheet says.

Swiss Timing has refused to coordinate with CBI probe in the case so far. With the firm remaining uncooperative, the special CBI judge hearing the case had no option but to issue summons to it. The summons was subsequently translated into German by the investigating agency and sent to the home ministry in mid-October for forwarding it to the Indian embassy in Berne.

In keeping with the protocol, the Indian embassy in the Swiss capital passed on the document to the Federal Department of Justice and Police of Switzerland, which served it on Swiss Timing’s headquarters at Corgemont last week.

The next date of hearing the case in special judge Talwant Singh’s court is December 14, and according to the law, the summons had to be slapped on the accused at least 30 days before the hearing date.