New Delhi:
The government has decided to close the case against Ottavio Quattrochi. Informing the Supreme Court of its decision, the government said all efforts to have the Italian businessman extradited to India have failed.
The government's decision can be challenged. Quattrochi's proximity to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi has made the case a political controversy.
In April, the CBI had disclosed that a Red Corner notice against the Italian businessman had been withdrawn. That essentially meant that his name was taken off an international Wanted list. The Opposition has repeatedly alleged that the Congress is bent on covering up the case to save its senior leaders.
Quattrochi is at the centre of the Bofors scam which rests on this premise: that Bofors, the Swiss makers of guns paid crores of kickbacks to top Indian politicians and key defence officials. In exchange, Bofors won a 1500-crore deal for 400 field guns. The deal was signed in 1986. Quattrochi was accused of being the main middleman.
There were 8 accused in the case, including Quattrochi. Three of them are dead. Another four, including the Hinduja brothers, Srichand and Gopichand, were acquitted by the Delhi High Court in 2004, which said there seemed to be no evidence of corruption.
The Bofors scam has been investigated by the CBI since 1990. Quattrochi and his wife left India overnight in 1993, after living here for several years.
In 2003, the case against Quattrochi became stronger when 2 British bank accounts were uncovered in his name and his wife's name. Four million Euros were allegedly in these accounts, raising the question of why an executive had so much money. The accounts were frozen. However, in 2006, India asked for those accounts to be de-frozen, claiming that it had found nothing to link them to the Bofors scam.