Who is Q? Twenty years ago even a school dropout would have given you a low down on Ottavio Quattrocchi, his closeness to Sonia Gandhi and thus the Gandhi family and how he made good the payoff in the Bofors gun deal case. Today, an IAS aspirant would be at his wit's end to describe Q - a middle-man who siphoned off crores as Bofors payoff, a good samaritan flogged for being close to the Gandhis or a maverick who has used loopholes in the Indian criminal jurisprudence to come around it. The IAS-aspirant should thank the pliant Central Bureau of Investigation for his dilemma.
In fact, Q, the Bofors payoff and the way it has been handled by various Congress regimes is a study in public administration that can come handy for an IAS aspirant. Who knows, one day, he may be part and parcel of the same CBI, known for its ever-ready willingness to bend backwards for the party in power. Twenty years into the country's biggest payoff scam of the century, one involving the high and mighty and their financial shenanigans, one which triggered a political campaign against corruption, one which made the most powerful 'sarkar' ever in Indian parliamentary history fall from public grace and subsequently voted out of power, questions are still being raised over the conduct of the CBI and its role vis-a-vis the accused.
Over the years the parties in power at the centre have used the Central Bureau of Investigation to further their own politcal interests. In fact, after the recent clean chit by CBI to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler, accused in 1984 anti-Sikh riots, the power of "superintendance" over CBI by the Union government was seen as the most pervert misuse of the investigating agency in the garb of impartial investigation and fair play. The main opposition BJP was caustic in its remark terming CBI as Congress Bureau of Investigation.
In fact, Jarnail Singh's highly deplorable act of hurling a shoe at Home Minister Chidambaram can be traced to the emotional groundswell of pent-up anger over the CBI's overzealousness in its out-of-the-way bid to give 'clean chit' to Tytler. The CBI's stance in court came as a shot in the arm for Tytler who had party ticket in one hand and was now armed with the moral right to contest, the stains of anti-Sikh riots washed away in one stroke by the detergent called the CBI.
'It is too much of a coincidence that in sensitive matters, the outcome of the CBI's investigation invariably depends on the political equation of the accused with the ruling power, and it changes without compunction with the change in that equation.' former CJI JS Verma aptly observed.
Justice Verma had precisely struck at the root of the problem when in the Jain Hawala case ( 1997 ) he held : The government's statutory power of "superintendence" over the CBI does not empower it to interfere with or regulate the investigation into any offence conducted by the CBI. The CBI's power to investigate being statutory, it is insulated from any extraneous influence, including that of the concerned minister.
But ten years later the same Supreme Court was to observe in the Taj corridor scam: "In matters after matters, we find that the efficacy and ethics of the governmental authorities are progressively coming under challenge...if this continues, a day might come when the rule of law will stand reduced to 'a rope of sand'."
Impartial investigation by CBI has been affected by political prejudices. The coalition era has dealt a severe blow to the fairness of the CBI and has hastened the pace of its slow death as an impartial investigating agency. The CBI has been deliberately kept at short leash by its political masters to browbeat a certain political party into falling in line or garner support from a party on promises of diluting CBI cases against them. From Mayawati to Mulayam, Laloo Yadav to Jayalalitha everyone has been part and parcel of this beautifully synchronised game of subtle poltical blackmail directed with panache by the party in power at the centre, with each player securing its own interests for its political survival and longevity.
The Jain-Hawala case, anti-Sikh riot case, Taj Corridor scam, Mulayam's disproportionate assets case, and the Bofors case have been cogent examples of how CBI has compromised its independence in investigating cases incluing who's who of public life. This goes against the grain of public psyche which looks up to the CBI as an impartial agency that does not shy away from taking on even the political and administrative bigwigs. But the end result as seen in the case of CBI probe in anti-Sikh riots, Jain Hawala or Bofors case leaves the citizen high and dry and sets him thinking whether CBI after all has been pursuing a political agenda and favouring the accused when it is expected to be fair, impartial and independent in all its pursuits.
It is in this backdrop, perhaps, that BJP leader Arun Jetley promises to set up a commission to probe the role of CBI and the accused were the NDA gets voted to power. The NDA's dream of seizing power in Delhi might just be a wishful thinking but the import of the concern raised by the main opposition party should not be lost on a common citizen who expects the government to treat criminals and law breakers, irrespective of their place in society, with an iron-hand. And therefore expects all investigating arms of the government to be fair and beyond politcal reproach.
The way CBI has been made to handle the entire Bofors case it calls for a national debate whether the investigating agency has shunned the objectives for which it was set up during World War II and rechristened in its present avtaar in 1963.
And until that happens keep guessing who 'Q' is. A criminal or a good Samaritan who just helped this country get booming Bofors guns and therefore deemed to be a friend of India and a friend of CBI. And for whose service the Indian government ought consider conferring Bharat Ratna on him, with UPA law minister H R Bharadwaj and CBI Director Swatantra Kumar sharing the honours.
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Documents obtained by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) long years ago conclusively proved that Congress president Sonia Gandhi's friend Ottavio Quattrocchi was paid over $ 7 million as commission by the Swedish arms manufacturer, AB Bofors, when we purchased field guns for our Army from that company. Yet, instead of prosecuting him and getting the commission back, the Manmohan Singh Government asked a London bank to de-freeze the accounts in which Mr Quattrocchi had stashed the booty and allowed him to walk away with Rs 21 crore. Since mollycoddling this fugitive is a matter of public policy for this Government, it responded with stunned silence for 17 days to the fortuitous arrest of Mr Quattrocchi in Argentina. Needless to say that its utter reluctance to bring this man to book has grievously hurt the credibility of the UPA Government at the Centre. More importantly, it has raised a fundamental question: Who is the Government batting for - the aam admi who gave it the vote, or the Nehru-Gandhi family's khaas admi who pocketed the "notes"?
The Congress's current embarrassment over the detention of Mr Quattrocchi in Argentina is inevitable because the party and Ms Gandhi have been consistently misleading the people about the facts of the case. The guns were bought in 1986 when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister. Why did Bofors give Mr Quattrocchi this commission? Is Mr Quattrocchi the real beneficiary, or is he just the front for somebody else? When they sold the gun to us, Bofors told us that the gun's USP is that it can 'shoot and scoot', but they never told us that the Howitzers would come with commission agents who would 'loot and scoot'.
The Bofors saga began in the early 1980s when the Army pressed for purchase of field guns. The three main contenders for the contract were Sofma of France, AB Bofors of Sweden and Voest Alpine of Austria. Throughout the evaluation process Sofma was ahead of the others, but in the final stages Bofors pipped Sofma at the post. Material gathered by the CBI from Sweden and Switzerland clearly establishes Mr Quattrocchi's hand in Bofors' success.
Bofors entered into a contract with a company called AE Services in the latter part of 1985, offering three per cent commission to it if the Indian contract was concluded before March 31, 1986. Strangely, the Rajiv Gandhi Government signed the contract with Bofors on March 24, 1986 - just one week before the expiry of this deadline. Two months later, India paid 20 per cent of the contract sum and Bofors, as per its deal, transferred $7.343 million to the AE Services account in Nordfinanz Bank, Zurich. The investigators found that AE Services in turn had transferred this money to the account of Colbar Investments operated by Mr Quattrocchi and his wife Maria.
How did Mr Quattrocchi, an Italian, manage to swing the deal before the expiry of the deadline? Who helped him achieve this extraordinary feat? These questions have been nagging Indians ever since that fateful Swedish Radio broadcast in April 1987 that spoke of bribes paid by Bofors to clinch the Indian contract. Next month will mark the 20th anniversary of that broadcast, which changed the course of Indian politics and raised questions in the Indian mind about the vulnerability of the Nehru-Gandhi family to the "foreign hand" that Mrs Indira Gandhi, with much prescience, repeatedly warned us about in the 1970s.
Ever since this radio's report, the Nehru-Gandhi family and the Congress have tried to exorcise this ghost but to no avail. They first tried to put the lid on this scandal through a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC), largely comprising cronies of the family. Disgusted with the Government's cover-up bid, the Opposition parties boycotted the JPC. The committee declared that no commissions or bribes were paid by Bofors. This conclusion turned out to be totally bogus when India obtained documents from the Swiss banks which showed that the arms manufacturer had paid huge sums of money as commissions to various persons, including Mr Quattrocchi. Since then, the party and the Nehru-Gandhi family have tried one trick after the other to put a lid on the scandal.
For example, those backing Mr Quattrocchi got Madhavsinh Solanki, then Foreign Minister, to hand over a note to his Swiss counterpart in February 1992, suggesting that the Swiss go glow on the Bofors investigations. When the media exposed the fraudulent move, Solanki promptly resigned from the Union Cabinet. Announcing his resignation, he said a lawyer, whose name he did not know, gave him the note. He delivered it to the Swiss Foreign Minister but was unaware of its content. Finally, neither he nor the Ministry of External Affairs had a copy of the note! Can there be anything more irresponsible than this? This incident showed the extent to which Mr Quattrocchi's friends would go to protect him.
Thereafter, obviously under pressure from the Nehru-Gandhi family, the Congress Government ensured Mr Quattrocchi's hasty getaway in 1993 after the latter failed to stall the issuance of a Red Corner notice by Interpol. He fled to Malaysia. Last year, succumbing to pressure, the Mamohan Singh Government allowed a bank in London to de-freeze Mr Quattrocchi's accounts. The latest in this 'Save Quattrocchi' campaign is the paralysis within Government after the man's arrest in Argentina. It did not even tell the Supreme Court about Mr Quattrocchi's arrest and his subsequent release on bail.
The CBI now says that the Ministry of External Affairs did not inform it about the bail granted to Mr Quattrocchi, just as Solanki said 15 years ago that he was unaware of the contents of the note that he delivered to the Swiss Foreign Minister. Yet, after all this, Mr Manmohan Singh "solemnly affirms" that the Government has done nothing wrong.
It is indeed sad to see the Congress, which was in the vanguard of the movement to drive out the British from India, being hostage to an Italian middleman and repeatedly sacrificing its credibility and honour to protect a man who knocked off commissions when we bought guns for our Army. Is this the stuff that Mr Manmohan Singh is made of? Does this Government, which is under an Italian spell, have the inclination and the will to protect India's self-respect and independence?
...Reply
i agree-- CBI and all investigating agencies are equally misused by political party/ies in power. and in this all of them are equal.
unfortunetly-- there is no solution to this other than hope and expectation that in future govt will giive fair chance to these agencies ...Reply
Yes of course a Bharat Ratna each for H R Bharadwaj and CBI Director Swatantra Kumar and even Man Mohan Singh and everyone else who is loyal to the Queen Victoria (read Sonia Gandhi)and her family. ...Reply
I am surprized with the fact as to how intelligentsia gets divided on party lines when important issues like recovering Indian money from swiss banks or catching Quattrocchi for Bofors kick-back crops up. In one of the leading english newspapers an article has been written by an editor (sunday,may 5), whom I was considering a balanced and non-partial writer. He has given the history of the Bofors story followed by his analysis and concluding that there are many gaps and holes in the story.According to him poor Quattrcchi has been persecuted and exept for BJP for all others it is a tiresome irrelevance.However most of the responses posted here indicate that people in general do not agree with him. I have asked him to explain why Quattrocchi is running away from Indian courts if there is no evidence against him. In fact the present UPA govt. and CBI are not at all hostile to him. Quattrocchi should come to India and get exonerated from the non partial judiciary.Till he does that the Italian connection will always be a relevant issue.
Shriram Bapat ...Reply
Great. Mr Q is now in line for BHARAT RATHNA ...Reply
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