CBI likely to file Hinduja charge-sheet today

Highly-placed official sources, however, say that the CBI’s charge-sheet will clinch the issue of the 85 million Swedish Kroners ($ 10 million) deposited by the Hindujas in coded Swiss Bank accounts were the third stream of Pitco-Morensco-Moineao payments, documents for which were received by the agency in December last year.

The supplementary charge-sheet is being described as a simple statement of fact on the co-relation of these payments with the Bofors deal but may not spell out the future course of action the agency will take against the Hindujas.

As reported by The Indian Express last week, while the bank documents clearly linked the Hindujas to the kickbacks, they gave no clue as to whether the $ 10-million remained in fact in the Swiss vaults or had been transferred to other banks as was the pattern in the other two stream of Bofors payments. The Hinduja payments had been deposited in the Credit Swisse Bank, the Hanover Manufacturers Trust and the Swiss Bank Corporation. While the Swiss courts had cleared the release of the documents pertaining to these deposits in January 1993, the Hindujas had blocked their transfer to India by filing one appeal after another in courts.

The first charge-sheet in the case was filed in October last year, naming Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi and Bofors agent Win Chadha as the recipients of the first two stream of payments. Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, in whose tenure the Rs 1,437 crore Bofors deal was signed in 1986, was also named in the first charge-sheet along with former Defence Secretary, S.K. Bhatnagar.

CBI sources do not rule out the possibility of a third charge-sheet being filed in the case soon, this time against non-recipients of Bofors bribes. Besides this, the CBI is also pursuing the missing leads with regards the Hinduja payments and in June this year, handed over a list of additional documents required to buttress their case against the Hindujas.

Afer turning down the repeated requests to join in the investigation or be questioned by the agency sleuths, the Hindujas finally took the plea last fortnight that while they were doing business with the Bofors company, the monies had nothing to do with the controversial gun contract.