Bofors scandal

These politicians were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB, an arms manufacturer principally financed by the Wallenberg family's Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken,[1] for winning a bid to supply to India the company's 155 mm field howitzer[2] – the sale of 410 field howitzers, and a supply contract for almost twice that amount, totalling a US$1.4 billion deal.

The scale of the corruption was far worse than any that Sweden and India had seen before[dubious – discuss] and directly led to the defeat of Gandhi's ruling Indian National Congress party in the November 1989 general elections.

[6] The case came to light during Vishwanath Pratap Singh's tenure as defence minister, and was revealed through investigative journalism tipped off by a Reuters news revelation on Swedish radio, followed up by a team led by N. Ram of the newspaper The Hindu.

In an interview with her, published in The Hoot in April 2012 on the 25th anniversary of the revelations,[8] Sten Lindström, former chief of Swedish police, discussed why he had leaked the documents to her and the role of whistle-blowers in a democracy.

[10] 24 March 1986 - A $285 million contract between the Government of India and Swedish arms company Bofors was signed for supply of 410 155 mm Howitzer field guns.

[2] Quattrocchi was reportedly close to the family of Rajiv Gandhi and emerged as a powerful broker in the 1980s between big businesses and the Indian government.

[14] 22 October 1999 - When National Democratic Alliance government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party was in power, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed the first chargesheet against Quattrocchi, Win Chadha, Rajiv Gandhi, the defence secretary S. K. Bhatnagar and a number of others.

[26] However, as per Sten Lindstrom, the former head of Swedish police, who led the investigations, they did not find anything to suggest that payments had been received by Rajiv Gandhi.

[34] The then defence minister Manohar Parrikar announced that in such cases, middlemen would be paid by the government for fixing arms deals under the name of "legal fees".

In 2004, Delhi High Court posthumously gave clean chit to Rajiv Gandhi and said that there was no case of corruption against him or any public servant.

This judgement stunned CBI as it had pursued the case for 14 years and was a setback to NDA government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee as well.

[41] Thereafter in 2012, Swedish police chief Sten Lindstrom, who led the investigations and identified himself as the whistleblower, said that Rajiv Gandhi had done nothing wrong and also cleared Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan and his family from any involvement in the scandal.

Instead, he accused Swedish government of diverting funds marked for development projects to secure the deal by flouting the rules and bypassing the institutions.