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T V R Shenoy

Silence of the Lambs

A vigilant Opposition is the watchdog of democracy. It alerts us when a government makes mistake. So when members of the Cabinet go around calling each other names, you would expect the Congress to speak up, right? Wrong!

Sonia Gandhi doesn't have a word to say. And when V N Gadgil, the Congress spokesman, finally opened his mouth, he timed it for the minimum impact possible -- just as India battled Australia at Sharjah! What's going on?

Briefly then, the Congress is badly placed to mount a moral platform on corruption and abuse of power (the sins attributed by Jayalalitha's devotees to Ramkrishna Hegde and Ram Jethmalani and vice-versa). Because its own president is poised to become a major embarrassment.

Take a look at Criminal Writ 214 of 1988 in the Delhi high court, with Ottavio Quattrocchi as the petitioner and the CBI as the respondent. Quattrocchi, still in Malaysia, requested the court to quash a warrant issued by Interpol at the CBI's request. Here is where it gets really interesting.

In its counter affidavit, the CBI has finally provided the first official confirmation of links between the Nehru-Gandhi, the Quattrocchis, and the whole messy Bofors affair. Permit me to quote from the CBI's response:

"...after the meeting of the negotiating committee dated March 12, 1986 in which the issue of a Letter of Intent to Bofors was recommended, a note was prepared by the Joint Secretary (O) on the same date. There is a flurry of activities involving officials of six departments, i e Ministry of Defence, Defence (Finance), Defence Production, Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, and Prime Minister's Office. Eleven signature of officials and ministers are available on the file in a matter of less than 48 hours."

Compare this to the sloth shown by the negotiating committee earlier. (After its first meeting on June 7, 1984, it met only seventeen times in almost two years.) More to the point, as late as February 17, 1986, the army preferred the French Sofa gun.

In other words, the army trod very carefully for almost two years. Then it suddenly rushed into an agreement in less than a month, reversing expert decisions in favour of the French option.

Only Rajiv Gandhi himself had the power to effect such decisions at such remarkable speed. But is there any official confirmation of the link between the Nehru-Gandhis and the Quattrocchis? I quote again from the CBI affidavit:

"The families of the then Prime Minister of India and Ottavio Quattrocchi were on very intimate terms... This is to be seen in light of the fact that Bofors had paid 50,463,966 Swedish kroner to A E Services on September 3, 1986, and virtually all this amount was transferred to Quattrocchi's Clobar Investment Ltd in UBS Geneva on September 16, 1986 and September 29, 1986."

There is more. "The documents collected from Snamprogetti confirm that Mr and Mrs Quattrocchi were in Geneva during the period when the relevant Swiss bank documents were signed by him." (True to form, Quattrocchi gave a non-existent address!)

The CBI affidavit offers the conclusions: "It would therefore follow that Quattrocchi was able to successfully negotiate with the then Prime Minister and other public servants concerned to obtain the contract for his principal. The public servants had, in turn, in abuse of their position, conferred pecuniary benefits on Quattrocchi, which acts would constitute offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act and the Indian Penal Code."

Much of this was known for several years. But there was never any official confirmation. How could there be? Between 1986 and today, almost every government was either a Congress regime or one supported from outside by that party. (The sole exceptions were V P Singh's eleven months rule and the first Vajpayee ministry.)

Quattrocchi's name didn't appear in the case, as the CBI now admits, until July 23, 1993. (Letters rogatory had been sent to the Swiss. Seven appellants went to court to stop the banks from opening their records to Indian investigators. Interpol informed India that Quattrocchi was one of them.) Quattrocchi left India six days later, without the CBI trying to stop him.

The CBI's highly informative affidavit explains Sonia Gandhi's curious silence. Reports to the contrary, there are no formal charges against Hegde and Jethmalani. When it comes to the Congress president, however, there is a 30-page affidavit filed by the CBI in the Delhi high court!

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