Author: Editorial
Publication: The Indian
Express
Date: September 29,
2000
There is nothing to beat
the Bofors case for bizarre twists and turns. Now come farcical revelations
from the Hindujas. On the face of it, the Hindujas have taken an
extraordinarily long time to clarify that the payments they received from
Bofors in 1986 were not related to the 155 m howitzer deal with India.
It is the classic defence. Only, why take so long over it? Had they
but said this at the start of the Indian investigations, they would not
have had the finger of suspicion pointed at them for the last ten years.
Reams have been written about the Hindujas in connection with the Bofors
payoffs scandal. How simple it would have been to quieten all the
speculation by telling the ``truth'' then. Surely the evidence produced
today before a Swiss investigating judge showing they were paid for other
services could have been produced years ago. It would have been a
credible claim then. After all, the Hindujas were known to be arms
dealers and presumably would have had various kinds of dealings with Bofors
andother armament manufacturers for which they would be paid commissions.
Today, however, their claim lacks credibility.
A straightforward statement
ten years ago might have spared this well-connected business family a great
deal of public embarrassment. Insteadtheir lawyers issued bland denials
as one detail after another of the Hinduja connection was uncovered by
investigative journalists. They made Indian and Swiss investigators
jump through many hoops before coming out with their version of the ``facts''.
There has to be some explanation for why they fought the transfer of Swiss
documents to India all the way through the Swiss legal system even going
as far as preferring an appeal to the Swiss federal councillor. The
established facts are: Bofors paid 80 million Swedish kroner in installments
between May and December 1986 into Swiss bank accounts -- Tulip, Lotus
and Mont Blanc -- in the name of McIntyre Corporation, a company registered
in Panama and owned by the Hindujas. The payments started two months
after the howitzer contract was signed by the Rajiv Gandhi government.
In the end, the timing may be explained away as coincidence, the secret
bank accounts and front companies as normal practice for international
arms dealers. However, the Hindujas can besure they do not come out
of this affair smelling of roses.
What does the CBI intend
to do now? One of the questions that should be asked is whether the Hindujas
were led inadvertently or otherwise to make the kind of defence they have
now made. Beyond that it will need to study the Hinduja deposition
before a Swiss judge and the evidence they submitted to him. It remains
to be seen whether the Hindujas have made a convincing case for themselves
by revealing, for example, the other deals they were allegedly paid for
by Bofors. It would be a brave person to predict the next twists
and turns in the Bofors investigations. Only one thing is certain.
It has kept this country entertained for ten long years and promises to
go on doing that for some more time. Whether anything serious will
eventually emerge is still an open question.
