GENEVA, January 4: The shadow of Bofors looms large once again over the Indian electoral scene as New Delhi seeks help from the British government in cracking three accounts in the Channel Islands into which part of the bribes were sent.A letter rogatory sent by New Delhi (via Interpol) to the British government in mid-December has requested that three accounts be investigated and the names of the account holders be communicated to India.The timing of the letter rogatory is significant since it was dispatched almost a year after the Swiss Government provided details of the Bofors bank account transactions to the Indian government in February last year. The government appears to have followed up the case only after the Congress Party withdrew support to the Gujral government in November.A CBI source in New Delhi was unwilling to specify the exact date on which the letter rogatory was finalised but acknowledged that it was towards the middle of December. This suggests that the letter rogatory probably preceded Sonia Gandhi's decision to campaign in the elections which took most Congress leaders by surprise.Trying to explain the reason for the long delay in pursuing the matter, the CBI source claimed that it was a long-winded process. First the government had to give permission to proceed. Then it was put before the court. After the court hearing, the case was sent to the Ministry of External Affairs so that it could be taken up by the High Commission in London with the British authorities.Meanwhile, at least one of the Channel Islands accounts is linked to Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi who fled India when The Indian Express linked him to the bribes paid by Bofors for the 1986 $1.3 billion Howitzer contract. Quattrocchi and his wife Maria have also been named by the CBI as recipients of the illegal payments made by Bofors. The Italian businessman, a close friend of Sonia Gandhi, was the Indian representative of the Italian engineering and petrochemicals firm Snamprogetti. India has made cosmetic moves to arrest Quattrocchi who now lives in Malaysia.An unexpected opportunity to reach Quattrocchi, presumably an Italian passport holder, comes this week when Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi arrives in New Delhi on a state visit tomorrow. Prodi is slated to meet Gujral whose UF coalition claims it is committed to the Bofors investigation. It is not at all uncommon for governments to raise issues like these on the sidelines of the main agenda. Prodi, whose commitment to probity and transparency in public life has made him a hero in Italy, will understand India's concerns, it is presumed.India has also not asked Bofors to return the money it siphoned off as bribes.It has, on the other hand, begun negotiations with the company which seeks to re-enter the Indian market which is very lucrative. If India is serious about the investigation, pursuing Bofors before allowing it to enter the Indian market is a real option. It may be recalled that after seven years of court battles after the V P Singh government sought Swiss assistance, the Swiss police on January 21, 1997 handed over the first set of bank papers to Indian investigators.On February 11, 1997 after a scrutiny of the documents, the CBI officially released names of the two Quattrocchis, Win Chadha, Harsh Chadha and the late Kanta Chadha as people who had received payments from Bofors.On February 24, independent investigation by The Indian Express in New Delhi, Sweden and Switzerland showed that Quattrocchi who had received $7 million in kickbacks from Bofors through A E Services forwarded the money to an account in Guernsey in the Channel Islands. The transfer from the Geneva account in what was formerly Union Bank of Switzerland (UBS account number 254.561W) to Guernsey was made on instructions from Quattrocchi.Guernsey is a tax haven between the United Kingdom and France, loosely administered from London.Investigations into the Bofors case have all along been done in fits and starts and seem to be have been used as a point of leverage. Last May, just before he was to be shunted out by the Gujral government, former CBI director Joginder Singh filed a charge-sheet on the Bofors case in which one of those named as accused was late prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. This created considerable embarrassment to the Gujral government since it was being supported by the Congress.The CBI has still to be given permission by the Gujral government to prosecute those named in the charge-sheet. They include several senior former bureaucrats such as S K Bhatnagar and Gopi Arora.
