I never met Congress leaders: Christian Michel

New Delhi

"No, never,” was the prompt reply of Michel when he was asked whether he had ever met Gandhi, Singh or the then Defence Minister A K Antony for pushing the deal.

“I have never met any of these,” he said in an interview. Michel sought to clear his name from the kickbacks scam claiming that he had ‘once’ shaken hands with the then IAF Chief S P Tyagi in Delhi but ‘avoided him’ for his links with Italian businessman Guido Haschke and another middleman. “I probably met him (S P Tyagi) in Gym khana club and I think I shook his hand there. But because of his association with Haschke I really avoided him,” he said.

He also said that BJP MP Subramanian Swamy has not lied about the deal but it seems he has been misled. “They (CAG) are not aviation experts and they are bureaucrats asked to put together documents way beyond their expertise. So he was misled by his own documentation,” he said.