THE BOFORS SCAM

The unfolding of the Bofor’s Saga

“Rajiv’s ‘Mr Clean’ image received a huge jolt when then Bofors corruption scandal broke out. The Swedish State Radio (16 April 1987) had broadcast a startling report about an under-cover operation carried out by Bofors, Sweden’s biggest arms manufacturer, whereby sixteen million dollars (equivalent to rupees twenty crores at the time) were allegedly paid to ‘members of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress’ in connection with the purchase of 155 mm Howitzer guns by the Government of India.  The Swedish radio’s report hit India as a thunderbolt. It was, expectedly, dismissed by the government as ‘false, baseless and mischievous’. However, the murky details of the payoffs in the Bofors deal soon came to light thanks to a meticulous and sustained journalistic investigation carried out by N. Ram and Chitra Subramaniam and published in the Hindu. In a stiff competition for the purchase of artillery guns between Bofors and a French company, the Army had settled for the latter. In spite of this, the order went to Bofors because someone had swung the deal in its favour by getting the government to work at breakneck speed, under instructions from none other than the Prime Minister himself. Who could it be? The capital was abuzz with talk about a certain ‘Italian connection’ in the Bofors deal.

In what must certainly rank among the finest examples of investigative reporting anywhere in the world, Ram and his colleague presented voluminous documentary evidence to show that the middleman was indeed an Italian named Ottavio Quattrocchi. Close observers of Rajiv Gandhi’s government had already known that Quattrocchi, who was working as the Delhi-based agent of an Italian multinational, had developed extremely close ties with the Prime Minister’s family due to his links with Rajiv’s Italian wife, Sonia Maino Gandhi. Because of his reputation as a wheeler-dealer with direct access to the Prime Minister’s residence, many ministers in the government were known to entertain, and be entertained by, Quattrocchi. When his name cropped up in media reports in the context of the Bofors scandal, people naturally recalled Rajiv Gandhi’s historic speech about ‘power-brokers’ in the Congress party and started wondering as to how Mr Clean had allowed a power-broker to operate from his own residence? What had sullied the Prime Minister’s credibility, especially, was the fact that the payoffs-which were later revealed to be close to fifty million dollars-were in flagrant violation of assurances repeatedly given by Bofors to the Indian government that it had no agents or representatives in India for the gun deal. Rajiv, himself, had assured the nation that middlemen would not be allowed ‘for the purpose of winning the contract’. As Ram wrote: ‘The documented facts have bribery written all over them. A massive order of illegitimate and unacknowledged payments, termed “commissions” and calculated on a percentage basis, was made by the Swedish arms manufacturing company into secret Swiss bank accounts after the Indian howitzer contract was won on March 24, 1986.The documents in the CBI’s possession establish Quattrocchi’s deep-end involvement in the Bofors corruption scandal’. Had Rajiv Gandhi responded to the media exposures in a transparent and honest manner, I have no doubt that his political stock in the country, which was already very high, would have gone up enormously. Sadly, quite the opposite happened. Almost from day one of the Bofors revelations, even his admirers started to feel that a cover-up was afoot. 

One of the most convincing accounts of this sordid saga is discussed in the book written by B.M. Oza, India’s Ambassador to Sweden. As soon as the Swedish media broadcast allegations about the Bofors payoffs to Indians, Oza, as is the duty of any conscientious diplomat, started to press the Swedish government for a serious probe into the matter. To his utter disbelief, he soon learnt that the Indian Prime Minister did not want the truth to be revealed. Indeed, Rajiv Gandhi spoke to his Swedish counterpart, Ingvar Carlsson, and told him that, since Bofors had already denied any payoffs, here was no need for any further investigation. Shockingly, Ambassador Oza was kept in the dark about this conversation. Rajiv’s credibility received a severe blow when V.P. Singh, a senior minister in his government, raised a banner of revolt. Singh’s portfolio had been shifted from Finance to Defence in January 1987 amid speculation that the Prime Minister was not too happy with his crusade against certain corporate wrong-doers. In his new ministry, Singh immediately ordered an investigation into an alleged scandal involving the acquisition of German submarines. This was criticised by the Prime Minister, who said he had not been consulted. Singh resigned from the government, alleging a cover-up. Shortly thereafter, he was expelled from the Congress party. Two more close lieutenants of Rajiv Gandhi, Arun Nehru and Arif Mohammed Khan, also abandoned him to join Singh. In October 1987, they formed the Jan Morcha, which metamorphosed into a full-fledged political party called the Janata Dal a year later. Singh made the Bofors cover-up the main plank of his political campaign, which gained phenomenal popularity in a short span of time and earned him the epithet ‘Mr Cleaner’, one who promised to reveal the truth about ‘Mr Clean’. The campaign against the cover-up in the Bofors deal caught the attention of the common people because it was about corruption in a defence deal. The shameful saga of the cover-up of the Bofors scam continued long after his government was voted out in the parliamentary 1989 elections, and, indeed, has persisted even in the present government of Dr Manmohan Singh. This is evident from the brazen manner in which the Congress-led UPA government misused the institutions to defreeze the overseas bank accounts of Quattrocchi and virtually allowed him to go scot-free in the Bofors case”.

Comments

Copyright © 2009 Friends of BJP — Because India Deserves Better