Author: Sumon K Chakrabarti
Publication: IBNLive.com
Date: September 27, 2007
URL: http://www.ibnlive.com/news/people-linked-to-gandhis-got-bofors-deal-payoffs/49447-3.html
He is the man who knows the inside story of
the Bofors Scam. For the first time ever the Chief Swedish Investigator in
charge of the Bofors case since 1989 - Sten Lindstrom - has spoken on camera
about the investigations for the first time.
While claiming that the CBI has fooled the
Indian public, he said that the money from the Bofors deal was paid to Italian
businessman Ottavio Quattorochi only because of his proximity with the Gandhi
family and Indian politicians.
He, however, admitted there was no direct
evidence of pay-offs against the Gandhis.
Sten Lindstrom was the man who headed the
Bofors investigations in Sweden. For 15 years he was in charge of the probe,
bringing out all the details in one of India's most high-profile scandals.
Lindstrom's allegation puts the CBI in dock.
He says that the CBI officials have so far met him for only 20 minutes and
that the Indian Government has never been serious of getting any cooperation
from Sweden.
BOFORS & QUATTROCCHI
India's most enduring scam - the Bofors deal
- first came to light in 1987 when a Swedish radio broadcast alleged kickbacks
in a defence deal for 155-mm howitzers. Incriminating documents surfaced in
Sweden and Switzerland.
Then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was accused
of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India's
155 mm field howitzer.
The scale of corruption was far worse than
any India had seen before, and directly led to the defeat of the ruling Indian
National Congress party in the November 1989 general elections.
Soon, the name of an Italian middleman, associated
with the scandal, started cropping up. The man was Ottavio Quattrocchi.
Quattrocchi was born in 1938, at Mascali,
in Italy. In 1964, at the age of 26, he came to India as a junior representative
of the Italian conglomerate, the ENI group.
The company initially undertook a number of
relatively small assignments for various fertiliser concerns, but 1970s onwards,
it acquired a high and controversial profile, thanks to Quattrocchi and his
access to the Nehru-Gandhi family.
His first success was in 1977, when he managed
to bag two contracts of the Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilisers Company and
Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers.
By the time he became a controversial figure,
he had extracted other contracts worth Rs 8,000 crore from the Indian government.
Union ministers and secretaries, not to mention
heads of public sector undertakings, were more than willing to dance to his
tunes.
Soon, the reversals began. Vishwanath Pratap
Singh, the then finance minister, refused to favour the Italian consortium
represented by Quattrocchi. But Quattarochi had moved on.
By then, he was also working as representative
for various other firms like AE services.
In 1986, AB Bofors appointed him as a negotiator
for the sale of 400 odd Bofors Howitzer guns, a deal worth Rs 1,436 crore.
Trouble began when the deal was hit by the
kickback scam and Parliamentary Committee investigation found him as being
one of the accused.
He escaped from India in 1993 to the United
Kingdom. In 1997, CBI finally got the necessary papers from Switzerland, and
in 1999, a case was filed against him.