Lorenzo Borgogni is an Italian businessman who was the longtime director of external relations at Finmeccanica, a partly government-owned company specialising in aerospace, defense and security.
In late 2012, Borgogni told Italian prosecutors that AgustaWestland, another subsidiary of Finmeccanica, had paid 51 million euros in kickbacks to win a helicopter contract with the government of India.
[7] In December 2009, the Finmeccanica subsidiary Selex Sistemi Integrati won a €400m contract to design, deploy, and maintain the Sistri system, which electronically tracks waste transportation and disposal.
In 2011, during a struggle over control of the firm between chairman Pier Francesco Guarguaglini and Giuseppi Orsi, who succeeded him in November of that year, Italian authorities began investigating allegations of bribery in connection with the contract, and concluded that in order to process the bribes, massive slush funds had been established by means of a complex system of false invoicing, several sham firms had been set up in Delaware and other tax havens, and secret bank accounts had been opened in Switzerland.
[13] Borgogni was suspended from office, at the request of the CEO Giuseppe Orsi, after newspapers published accounts of his interrogation in Rome, in which he admitted accepting millions of Euros from companies which received contracts from Finmeccanica.
[12] Borgogni supplied detailed information regarding the identities of the middlemen and the means by which AgustaWestland had distributed a total of 51 million euros in kickbacks to individuals in India.
"[15] Indian politician Ram Jethmalani wrote in 2012 that the Italian investigation had apparently been "triggered by in-house Finmeccanica rivalries," namely between Guarguaglini and Orsi.
"[17] Another 25 April 2012 report stated that Naples prosecutors following up Borgogni's accusations were gathering evidence in Switzerland about Finmeccanina's alleged Swiss bank accounts.
[19] An Indian newspaper stated on 13 February 2013 that Italian prosecutors had been "on the corruption trail for the last two years after former head of Finmeccanica's external relations wing Lorenzo Borgogni made disclosures about the payment of 51million Euros.
"[15] As a result of their investigation of Borgogni's charges, Italian police in April 2013 arrested several individuals on suspicion of such crimes as criminal association, false invoicing, and corruption.
[20] On 17 March 2014 a Milan court ruled in favor of AgustaWestland in a case in which the Indian Ministry of Defense sought to recover some €278 million in bank guarantees over the scrapped helicopter deal.
"[21] On 9 October 2014 Orsi and his co-defendant, former AgustaWestland executive Bruno Spagnolini, were both sentenced to two years in prison for false bookkeeping and acquitted of international corruption in the helicopter case.
[22] On 24 March 2014 Italian police arrested Borgogni and Stefano Carlini, a former director of Finmeccanica's electronics unit, Selex Service Management, on charges of criminal association and corruption[1] in relation to the development of the Sistri system.
"[12] As of November 2011, Borgogni was "under investigation over possible illicit payments as part of a criminal inquiry in Rome into contracts for Enav SpA, Italy's air-traffic control agency."
[citation needed] In the Enav case, a prosecutor asked for Borgogni's imprisonment in connection with charges of illegal payments to political parties, but a juge decided that such a measure was not yet necessary.