Request on Bofors under scrutiny

LONDON, Jan 6: Channel Islands has said it is studying the Indian request for the freezing of three Bofors accounts'' and identifying thei...

LONDON, Jan 6: Channel Islands has said it is studying the Indian request for the freezing of three “Bofors accounts” and identifying their holders.“We are in receipt of the documents sent by Indian authorities relating to three accounts on the Channel Island and we are carefully scrutinising the request,” a spokesman for the attorney general’s office at Guernsey Island, where the Channel Islands administration headquarters are located, said.

India last month sent a letter rogatory to the British authorities seeking cooperation in freezing of the three accounts in which part of the alleged Rs 640-million Bofors pay-off is suspected to have been transferred from Swiss banks.

The Indian request was channelled to the administration of the island, located off the coast of France, by the British home office.

The attorney general’s office spokesman said, “We have clear laws for cooperation laid out in cases involving drug money, money laundering, frauds and bribery cases.” “If the Indian request conforms to our laws, we would definitely cooperate. We are studying the nature of breaches pointed out by Indian officials,” he said. When the attention of the British home office was drawn to a media report from India that Britain had rejected the Indian request, the officials said, “We have only just received the request and passed it on to the Channel Islands administration which is dealing with it.

The question of any rejection or cooperation at this stage does not arise.”The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), probing the alleged pay-offs in the Bofors gun deal signed in 1986, has said the three Channel Island accounts were “the final and vital key” to unravel the identity of the main recipients of the pay-offs. The three accounts, all bearing fictitious fronts like Tulip, Mount Blanc and others, are directly linked to former managing director of the company Martin Ardbo, who according to the CBI’s letter rogatory, had himself opened them and transferred money from company accounts via Swiss banks. The CBI, in the letter rogatory, has forwarded the findings of the investigations carried out by Swiss legal authorities on these accounts. The investigations, running into 500 pages, were handed over to the Indian authorities by the Swiss government late last year.

The Indian request for freezing of the three accounts and identifying their holders has been made under provisions of the 1993 India-UK bilateral extradition treaty.