Thaindian News

New Delhi, Sep 8 (IANS) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Tuesday sought two weeks from a Delhi court to decide its further course of action against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi in connection with the 1987 Bofors pay off case.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Taveri Baweja approved the CBI’s contention and posted the matter for Oct 3.

The court was hearing the matter after Quattrocchi’s name was withdrawn from the list of wanted persons by CBI last year.

Quattrocchi, the lone surviving suspect in the case, was known to be close to the family of late Rajiv Gandhi who was prime minister in 1987 when the Bofors bribery scandal broke.

The case against the Italian businessman has taken tortuous twists and turns after he was named in a 1999 CBI chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribe.

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

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

The 12-year Interpol Red Corner Notice, or lookout notice, against Quattrocchi, who has till date evaded interrogation, was taken off from the “wanted” section of the agency’s website reportedly on the legal advice of Attorney General Milon Banerjee last year.

Quattrocchi 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.