Ottavio Quattrocchi (1938 – 13 July 2013) was an Italian businessman who was being sought until early 2009 in India for criminal charges for acting as a conduit for bribes in the Bofors scandal.
[8] Quattrocchi, born in Mascali, province of Catania, Sicily, in 1938, arrived in India in the mid 1960s as the representative of Italian oil and gas firm Eni and its engineering arm Snamprogetti.
"[11]That his influence extended to ministers was noted by VP Singh, who initially pursued the Bofors scandal, and whose testimony is summarised in a court judgement: V.P.
The award of Jagdishpur Fertilizer Plant to Quattrocchi, changing earlier decision for SPIC, is a clear case.
A firm called AE Services was named – it was found to have a paid up capital of lira 100, and no employees[13] Chitra Subramaniam and N. Ram of The Hindu obtained the private diary of Bofors MD Martin Ardbo, which revealed comments such as "Q's involvement may be a problem because of closeness to R.".
The identity of "Q" became clearer when the investigation team identified the Swiss bank where the AE Services' money went to, and determined that it was operated by Ottavio Quattrocchi.
[14] Around the same time, Sonia Gandhi spoke up for him in her first press conference On 22 October 1999, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led NDA government in power, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a chargesheet against Quattrocchi, naming AE Services as a front company run by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria.
[16] On 5 February 2004 the Delhi High Court quashed the charges of bribery against Rajiv Gandhi and others,[17] citing inadequate evidence that any of the commission was actually paid to them.
Sonia Gandhi celebrated: After 17 years of abuse and vilification, it's a special moment today for me and my children, Rahul and Priyanka.
Several appeals by Quattrocchi to de-freeze these accounts were turned down by British courts, based on vigorous marshalling of evidence by the CBI.
The law minister Hansraj Bhardwaj deputed the additional solicitor general of India, B. Dutta, to London to specifically request release of these accounts.
[3] According to an e-mail from the British authorities (cited in India Today), Mr Datta conveyed his instructions on behalf of the Government of India, the Ministry of Justice and the Central Bureau of Investigation that no useful purpose will be served by maintaining the Restraining Order dated July 25, 2003, as there is no longer any reasonable prospect of the case against Mr Quattrocchi proceeding to trial.
[18]On 16 January 2006, a Public Interest Litigation was filed in the Supreme Court, and the CBI was ordered to ensure that the money was not withdrawn until the reasons for the government decision were clarified.
The CBI director, Vijai Shankar explained the delay saying that it took time to translate the documents from Spanish, but this explanation appeared lame, and it turned out to be false since the intimation was sent by the Indian Embassy in English.
Any meeting between Priyanka and Massimo was vigorously denied by Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh, but when interviewer Karan Thapar asked him how he knew, he simply repeated the denial.
[32] However, the Congress spokesman blamed the loss in Argentina to earlier NDA government incompetence: "we lost to three courts in Malaysia".
[19] In April 2009, The Interpol removed the red-corner notice issued against Ottavio Quattrocchi after a request from the Central Bureau of Investigation.
[34] In sharp contrast to a nearly two-decade-long investigation by the CBI, an income tax tribunal bench has ruled that Rs.
[35] A major chapter in the 25-year-old Bofors saga was closed on 4 March 2011 with a Tis Hazari court discharging Quattrocchi from the payoffs case after allowing the CBI to withdraw prosecution against him.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vinod Yadav, in his 73-page order, noted that the CBI, despite "spending through the nose for about 21 years, has not been able to put forward legally sustainable evidence with regard to conspiracy in the matter.