CWG scam: CBI arrests Nussli India MD Wadhwa

Finding evidence of kickbacks paid to Commonwealth Games organising committee (OC) officials in contracts for the supply of overlays, the Central Bureau of Investigation on Monday arrested Sandeep Wadhwa, the managing director of Comfort-Net, a company that had tied with Nussli Switzerland Ltd for the contract. 

The CBI claims to have evidence of the company resorting to illegal means to win the Rs140-crore overlays contract. "We have found a money trail to this company. Wadhwa paid money to OC officials to get the contract. We cannot disclose the names of those officials right now because investigations are on but we have found links of kickbacks," a CBI official said.

The arrest is the fifth made so far by the CBI in the Rs685-crore overlays scam, and Wadhwa is the third non-Organising Committee individual to be arrested. 

Nussli India was given a contract of nearly Rs140 crore for supply of tents, portable cabins, containers, security fences, furniture, public display LED boards, floor finishes, material handling equipment, generator sets, cabling, UPS, air-conditioners, lighting, civil construction, athletic exercise equipment and grandstands, for six games venues.

The company signed a memorandum of understanding with a Candian firm's Indian unit to supply steel-based modular fittings for these venues.

The contracts, the investigating agency noted after going through documents, related to the supply of overlays, were handed out at inflated rates, which invited their suspicion on money being exchanged in the process.