The matter of the blacklisting of Singapore Technologies by the Indian Ministry of Defense just gets curiouser and curiouser. The arms company has contradicted the basis of the report, tabled by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in Parliament, on the special audit it conducted at the request of the Ministry of Defense, into the facts and circumstances that gave rise to the corruption case against the former Director General of Ordnance Factories and Chairman of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB), Sudipta Ghosh.
The arms company had been recommended for blacklisting by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in June last year, after Sudipta Ghosh was implicated in a corruption case. A decision to blacklist was held in abeyance last December to allow trials of artillery howitzers and other weapons systems to be conducted, subject to the investigations agency’s final report.
But in January the company claimed this was not the case and that it had not, in fact, been blacklisted.
