Click to play videoNew Delhi: Efforts to extradite Bofors main accused Ottavio Quattrocchi is on. A 2-member CBI team will leave for Argentina on 28th February after a 17-day delay to bring back Quattrocchi.
The CBI says it wants to meet the March 7 deadline for the extradition of Quattrocchi, accused in the Bofors payoff scam.
Quattrocchi is currently detained in the Argentine Capital Buenos Aires. But 17 crucial days passed before the news of his detention was made public by the CBI.
After CBI initiated the papers for extradition its request to Ministry of External Affairs was routed through the Department of Personnel and Training, which oversees the agency.
The paper work is expected to be completed on Monday and Tuesday after which the two-member team will leave for Argentina, CBI sources said here today.
Quattrocchi allegedly got kickbacks from Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors in return fro contract to sell 155mm Howitzer guns to the Indian army.
He had left India in 1993 and has been pursued by the CBI since then.
The news of his detention has come as a shot in the arm for CBI, which drew flak in January last year after a British bank de-froze his bank account.
The bank action came after the agency failed to provide any evidence to the British Crown Prosecution Service, which had frozen his two bank accounts having three million pounds in July 2003.
Interpol had informed the CBI that the accounts were frozen after the Crown Prosecution Service of London obtained the restraining order against Quattrocchi for operation of the bank accounts.
The accounts were frozen after the CBI had claimed that Quattrocchi had received 712 million dollars from AB Bofors through AE Services, a UK-based company.
After receiving this money, Quattrocchi had been transferring the funds from one account to another and from one jurisdiction to another to avoid detection and evade the due process of law.
Quattrocchi has been missing since a Malaysian lower court had rejected the extradition request of India and allowed him to travel abroad in 2002.
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