Two years after our courts finally withdrew all the charges against him in the much-maligned mole-tunred hill Bofors case, the controversial main accused Ottavio Quattrocchi passed away in the Italian city of Milan. The 74-year-old Italian businessman's wife Maria said Quattrocchi died of a stroke Saturday. But an agency reported quoting a family member said Quattrocchi had died Friday, and the funeral would take place Monday.
The Rs 640-crore Bofors scandal erupted after a 1987 report on Swedish radio, claiming that Bofors had paid bribes to secure the contract.With almost all the accused in the scandal dead– the middleman Win Chadha and Bofors chairman Martin Ardbo and the former defence secretary S K Bhatnagar -and industrialists Hindujas are also no longer accused in the case, will the case also die out politically? Does not look like in an election year as a cornered BJP will try to kick its dust up again.
The controversial Quattrocchi was the key figure in the Rs 640-crore Bofors payoffs scandal as the CBI chargesheet filed in 1999 had named him as he was close to the Gandhi family during his days in the country as the representative of an Italian firm.The scam related to the alleged payoffs worth Rs 640 crore for supplying Swedish howitzer guns to the Army. The Rs 1,600 crore contract was clinched in 1986 when the late Rajiv Gandhi was the prime minister.
The Hinduja brothers, who were chargesheeted in the case in 2000, have also been discharged. Quattrocchi left India in 1993 and was subsequently declared a fugitive with a red corner notice against him. He never joined the trial in New Delhi, and the CBI failed in two attempts to extradite him–once from Malaysia in 2003 and then from Argentina in 2007. The failures–once each under an NDA and a UPA government–were subjects of huge political controversy. The CBI had unsuccessfully tried to extradite Quattrocchi but it lost two extradition appeals, first in Malaysia in 2002, and then in Argentina in 2007. Quattrochi left India in 1993 to avoid being arrested.
Defence minister AK Antony recently said the government did not plan to launch any fresh probe into the Bofors scandal and that Quattrocchi stood "discharged" as he could not be extradited even after 20 years of registration of the case.But on March 4, 2011, the Tis Hazari Court in the Capital had discharged Quattrocchi from the payoffs case after allowing the CBI withdrawing prosecution charges against him, bringing to an end a major chapter in the 25-year-old Bofors saga. An application for withdrawal of the case agains Quattrocchi was filed by the public prosecutor on October 3, 2009.Antony had told Parliament that Quattrocchi had leftthe country on July 29-30, 1993, before CBI had "any material evidence warranting his arrest" in the Bofors case. The scandal had cost Rajiv Gandhi and the Congress the 1989 general elections. With the measures undertaken by the CBI failing to getQuattrocchi extradited from Malaysia and Argentina, he now "stands discharged from the case", he added.
Chief metropolitan nagistrate Vinod Yadav, in his 73-page order, while discharging the Italian had noted that the CBI, despite "spending through the nose for about 21 years, had not been able to put forward legally sustainable evidence with regard to conspiracy in the matter.Further, in the case of Quattrocchi, as against the alleged kickback of Rs 64 crore he received, the CBI had by 2005 already spent around Rs 250 crore on the investigation, which was sheer wastage of public money," the court had said.
The grounds stated by the CBI in 2009 for withdrawal of prosecution were: more than 19 years had passed since the first case was registered in 1990; all the other accused had died or proceedings against them had been quashed by the Delhi High Court; attempts to extradite Quattrocchi from Malaysia and Argentina had failed; and the Delhi High Court in 2004 had knocked out allegations of corruption or conspiracy with public servants.On February 6, 2007, Quattrocchi was detained in Argentina on the basis of the Interpol warrant. CBI came under attack for allegedly putting up a half-hearted effort towards his extradition and Delhi lost the case for his extradition in June 2007 with the judge remarking that "India did not even present proper legal documents".
Quattrocchi, born in Mascali, province of Catania, Sicily, is reported to have arrived in India in the mid-1960s as the representative of Italian oil and gas firm Eni and its engineering arm Snamprogetti.
