New Delhi, Sep 29 (IANS) It was merely a question of time before the government decided to stop all prosecution against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi for his alleged involvement in the Bofors gun payoff case of the 1980s, especially after the CBI decided in April to strike off his name from its list of wanted persons.
“It’s taken longer than usual but this was the inevitable step,” said a senior Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official who wished he not be named.

Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam Tuesday made a statement before a Supreme Court bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan that the government had decided to stop all prosecution against Quattrocchi.

The 12-year Interpol Red Corner notice against Quattrocchi was taken off from the wanted section of the agency’s website reportedly on the legal advice of Attorney General Milon Banerjee last year.

According to Banerjee, the CBI did not have any basis to keep Quattrocchi’s name listed in the Interpol Red Corner notice, especially after it lost the case for his extradition from Argentina in February 2007.

The case against Quattrocchi, known to be close to late Rajiv Gandhi, who was prime minister in 1987 when the defence purchase bribery scandal broke out, and his wife Sonia Gandhi who is now Congress president, has taken tortuous twists and turns after he was named in a CBI charge sheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribe in 1999.

He was accused by the CBI of receiving millions of dollars in commissions for helping to fix the $1.4 billion gun deal in the mid-1980s.

Till date he has managed to evade interrogation.

The nearest the CBI came to catch him was in February 2007 when Quattrocchi was detained in Argentina on the basis of the Interpol warrant.

But the CBI took time in translating documents that were to be presented in the designated court there and also put up an allegedly half-hearted effort towards his extradition. It finally lost the case for his extradition four months later.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself has said that the case had proved an “embarrassment” for the government.

“The Quattrocchi case is an embarrassment for the government of India. We have tried to extradite him from Malaysia. We have tried to extradite him from Argentina. We have failed. The court says we do not have a strong case,” Manmohan Singh had said in the run-up to the April-May general elections.

Speaking for the first time on Quattrocchi, he said the case did not show the Indian legal system in good light.

“It’s not a good reflection on the Indian legal system that we harass people while the world says we have no case. The Interpol had asked the government of India why do you want to treat him under the Red Corner notice.”