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CBI files graft case against Rolls Royce

Central Bureau of Investigation.

The FIR names Rolls-Royce PLC; Tim Jones, director, Rolls Royce India Pvt Ltd; alleged arms dealers Sudhir Choudhrie and Bhanu Choudhrie; and British Aerospace Systems as accused, the CBI stated…reports Asian Lite News

The CBI has registered an FIR under prevention of corruption and criminal conspiracy against British aerospace and defence company Rolls-Royce Holdings PLC and senior executives of the company’s India unit, London-based arms agent Sudhir Choudhrie and his son Bhanu, British Aerospace Systems, and some unnamed officials of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) for alleged corruption in procurement of Hawk 115 Advanced Jet Trainer aircraft for Indian Air Force and Navy.

In 2016, the CBI had registered a preliminary enquiry (PE) into the allegations, which was later converted into a regular case on May 23 based on a complaint from Pawan Kumar Srivastava, deputy superintendent of CBI.

The FIR names Rolls-Royce PLC; Tim Jones, director, Rolls Royce India Pvt Ltd; alleged arms dealers Sudhir Choudhrie and Bhanu Choudhrie; and British Aerospace Systems as accused, the CBI stated.

According to the FIR, a British court order in 2017 had also mentioned alleged involvement of intermediaries and payment of commission by the company for swinging the deal. The FIR stated that details of the PE reveal that “unknown officers of MoD, during the period 2003 to 2012, entered into criminal conspiracy with Tim Jones, Sudhir Choudhrie and his son Bhanu, Rolls Royce, UK, M/s British Aerospace Systems, UK, and other unknown public servants and private persons with the object to cheat the Central government in the matter of procurement of Hawk Aircraft from M/s Rolls Royce, and its associate group companies.”

The FIR stated that “unknown public servants abused their official positions” and “approved and procured” 24 Hawk 115 Advance Jet Trainer (AJT) aircraft for £734.21 million. Licence manufacturing of 42 additional aircraft by the Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) “against materials supplied by the manufacturer for an additional amount of $308.247 million”, and “£7.5 million towards Manufacturer’s Licence Fee” were also cleared “in lieu of huge bribes, commissions and kickbacks”, the FIR stated.

This is despite the fact that agreements, integrity pact and associated documents/orders related to the deal “prohibited payments to intermediaries and middlemen”, the CBI alleged.

“It was further alleged that GBP (British pound) 100 million were paid by Russian arms companies into Swiss bank account in the name of Portsmouth, a company associated with Sudhir Choudhrie, with regard to defence deals with Russia for purchase of MIG fighter aircraft,” the FIR stated. “Out of this amount, companies in the name of Choudhrie’s family — Belines Services Ltd., Cottage Consultant Ltd., and Carter Consultants Inc — received GBP 39.2 million, GBP 32.8 million and GBP 23 million, respectively, between October 2007 and October 2008.”

It stated that Choudharie and his son Bhanu are alleged to be “unregistered Indian agents/middlemen who worked for Rolls Royce/BAES in securing award of contract for supply of Hawk aircraft” concerned and allegedly used “undue influence” on Indian bureaucrats to get them to approve the deal.

Bhanu Choudhrie was director of Belinea Services Limited and Anterna Limited, two companies set up in the British Virgin Islands in October 2002, which made more than 200 transactions of at least $118 million between 2009 and 2014 even as three global banks kept flagging suspected “money laundering/structuring” without blocking any.

According to the CBI’s FIR, the PE noted that in 2008-10, the accused persons approved license-manufacturing of 57 additional Hawk aircraft by HAL for Rs 1,502.68 crore under a separate agreement with BAE Systems (Operations) Ltd, another entity belonging to the BAES group.

ALSO READ-Rolls Royce all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ aircraft breaks records

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Business Motoring

Hyundai, Rolls-Royce team up for air mobility

The partnership will leverage Rolls-Royce’s aviation and certification capabilities and its own hydrogen fuel cell technologies and industrialisation capability….reports Asian Lite News

South Korea’s automotive major Hyundai Motor Group and Rolls-Royce have teamed up to bring out an all electric propulsion and hydrogen fuel cell technology-powered air mobility.

According to Hyundai, the partnership will leverage Rolls-Royce’s aviation and certification capabilities and its own hydrogen fuel cell technologies and industrialisation capability.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between Rolls-Royce and Hyundai includes five strategic aims:

* Collaborating on the technology development and requirements of power and propulsion systems for Hyundai’s Advanced Air Mobility Division

* Collaborating on the industrialisation of Rolls-Royce power and propulsion systems for the advanced air mobility market

* Development of electric propulsion systems based on hydrogen fuel cells as an energy source for Hyundai’s RAM platforms

* Collaborating to bring to market a joint fuel-cell electric propulsion system to the wider AAM market

* Delivering a joint fuel-cell electric aircraft demonstration by 2025.

According to Jaiwon Shin, President, Hyundai Motor Group, the partnership with Rolls-Royce will draw upon their aviation and certification expertise to accelerate the development of hydrogen fuel-cell propulsion systems.

“Hyundai has successfully delivered hydrogen fuel cell systems to the global automotive market and is now exploring the feasibility of electric and hydrogen propulsion technologies for aerospace integration. We believe this to be the key technology to support the global aviation industry’s goal to fly net zero carbon by 2050,” he added.

Meanwhile, the union of Hyundai Motor said on Tuesday it has tentatively agreed with the company to build a dedicated electric vehicle (EV) plant in South Korea by 2025 amid a global electrification push.

Hyundai and its union reached an agreement on the domestic EV plant in the carmaker’s main Ulsan plant, 414 kms southeast of Seoul, a union spokesperson told Yonhap news agency.

The tentative agreement is subject to a vote by unionized workers as early as this month, ahead of the one-week summer holidays, which begin on July 30, he said.

Hyundai and its union are in negotiations over wages for this year and the domestic EV plant, a company spokesperson said.

The planned EV plant is part of Hyundai Motor Group’s plans announced in May to invest 63 trillion won ($49.8 billion) in its domestic businesses by 2025.

In May, Hyundai Motor Group also announced it will invest $5.54 billion to build a dedicated EV and car battery manufacturing plant in Georgia, the United States, with an aim to start production in the first half of 2025.

Hyundai has seven domestic plants in Korea and 11 overseas plants — four in China, and one each in the U.S., the Czech Republic, Turkey, Russia, India, Brazil and Indonesia. Their combined capacity reaches 5.65 million vehicles.

ALSO READ: Hyundai to bet big on eco-friendly cars

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Business Tech Lite

Rolls Royce all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ aircraft breaks records

Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce, said: “Achieving the all-electric world-speed record is a fantastic achievement for the ACCEL team and Rolls-Royce…reports Asian Lite News

Half of the ACCEL project’s funding is provided by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and Innovate UK…reports Asian Lite News

Rolls Royce has announced that its all-electric ‘Spirit of Innovation’ aircraft is officially the world’s fastest all-electric aircraft, having set two new world records which have now been independently confirmed.

On 16 November 2021, the aircraft reached a top speed of 555.9 km/h (345.4 mph) over 3 kilometres, smashing the existing record by 213.04 km/h (132mph). In further runs at the UK Ministry of Defence’s Boscombe Down experimental aircraft testing site, the aircraft achieved 532.1km/h (330 mph) over 15 kilometres – 292.8km/h (182 mph) faster than the previous record. Both records have been officially verified by FAI, the World Air Sports Federation that controls and certifies world aeronautical and astronautical records. During its record-breaking runs, the aircraft, which is part of the UK Government-backed ACCEL or ‘Accelerating the Electrification of Flight’ project, also clocked up a maximum top speed of 623km/h (387.4mph) making it the world’s fastest all-electric vehicle.

Warren East, CEO, Rolls-Royce, said: “Achieving the all-electric world-speed record is a fantastic achievement for the ACCEL team and Rolls-Royce. I would like to thank our partners and especially aviation start-up Electroflight, for their collaboration in achieving this pioneering breakthrough. The advanced battery and propulsion technology developed for this programme has exciting applications for the Advanced Air Mobility market. This is another milestone that will help make ‘jet zero’ a reality and supports our ambitions to deliver the technology breakthroughs society needs to decarbonise transport across air, land and sea.”

Half of the ACCEL project’s funding is provided by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), in partnership with the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy and Innovate UK.

UK Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “Rolls-Royce’s revolutionary Spirit of Innovation aircraft is yet more proof of the UK’s enviable credentials when it comes to innovation. This record will show the potential of electric flight and help to unlock the technologies that could make it part of everyday life. The government is proud to back projects like this to leverage the private investment necessary to unlock cleaner, greener aircraft which will allow people to fly as they do now, but in a way that cuts emissions.”

Gary Elliott, CEO of the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), said: “The ACCEL project demonstrates that strategic investment in UK technology and innovation can achieve extraordinary world-beating results, and sets us firmly on the path to decarbonising passenger flight in the future. This achievement of Rolls-Royce, Electroflight and YASA will resonate for many years to come and inspire the next generation of aerospace engineers. They deserve their place in the record books and the ATI is proud to have played our part in that. Congratulations to the whole team.”

The aircraft was propelled on its record breaking runs by 400kW (500+hp) electric powertrain and the most power-dense propulsion battery pack ever assembled in aerospace. We worked in partnership with aviation energy storage start-up Electroflight and automotive powertrain supplier YASA. As well as a stunning technical achievement, the project and world record runs provided important data for our future electric power and propulsion systems for all-electric urban air mobility (UAM) and hybrid-electric commuter aircraft. The characteristics that ‘air-taxis’ require from batteries, for instance, are very similar to what was developed for the ‘Spirit of Innovation’.

Rolls-Royce has an incredible history of flying speed record attempts and breaking records, dating back to the Schneider Trophies of the early 1930’s. The speed achieved by test pilot and Rolls-Royce Director of Flight Operations Phill O’Dell in the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ was more than 213.04 km/h (132 mph) faster than the previous record set by the Siemens eAircraft powered Extra 330 LE Aerobatic aircraft in 2017. Never before in the history of the World Air Sports Federation (FAI) record attempts has there been such a significant increase in speed over such a short timeframe, highlighting the rapid pace at which the electrification of aerospace is advancing. Electroflight Pilot Steve Jones flew the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ aircraft for the 15km record run.

Phill O’Dell said: “Breaking the world-record for all-electric flight is a momentous occasion. This is the highlight of my career and is an incredible achievement for whole team. The opportunity to be at the forefront of another pioneering chapter of Rolls-Royce’s story, as we look to deliver the future of aviation, is what dreams are made of.”

All three organisations involved in the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ – Rolls-Royce, Electroflight and YASA – share a passion for innovation and through the development process we have learned from the motorsport background of both our partners and from Electroflight’s pace as a start-up. We have also shared our aerospace expertise, including the rigorous safety and testing methods needed by the civil aviation industry. This combination has helped turn a concept into a world record breaker.

Stjohn Youngman, Managing Director, Electroflight. “We are delighted to have played an integral role in this landmark project. Its success is a fitting tribute to the dedication and innovation of the Electroflight team and our suppliers. Developing the propulsion and battery system, in collaboration with experienced program partners, has resulted in a world class engineering capability that will lead the way towards the decarbonisation of air travel. Our next step is to adapt this pioneering technology so it can be applied across the wider aerospace industry to deliver a more sustainable way to fly.”

Dr Tim Woolmer, YASA’s Chief Technology Officer and Founder said, “Electric flight is set to be as transformative for mobility as the jet engine was 70 years ago. It’s thrilling to see our ultra-high performance, super-low weight electric motors powering the ‘Spirit of Innovation’ to these great speeds, and to know that collaborative projects like ACCEL take us one step closer to emissions-free electric flight becoming a commercial reality for all.”

The ACCEL programme has also been supported by two further great British pioneers, Jaguar Land Rover, who have loaned all-electric zero emission Jaguar I-PACE cars as towing and support vehicles; and Bremont, the luxury watchmaker, who were the official timing partner for the record attempt. The aircraft took off from the MoD’s Boscombe Down site, which is managed by QinetiQ and flew profiles according to the FAI guidelines for record attempts in the Powered Aeroplane C-1C Electric class.

Our involvement in the ACCEL project is just one of the ways in which we are looking to make aviation more sustainable. In June last year, we announced our pathway to net zero carbon emissions – a year on from joining the UN Race to Zero campaign.

The third record of our all-electric aircraft for the fastest time to climb to 3000 metres in a time of 202 seconds, breaking the current record by 60 seconds, is still going through the verification process.

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