New Delhi:
Nearly 25 years after the Bofors scam rocked both India and Sweden, the Swedish whistleblower who had blown the lid off the illegal payoffs case has revealed his identity.
In an interview that appears on the website hoot.org, former Swedish police chief Sten Lindstrom has owned up being the person who leaked over 350 documents to Indian journalist Chitra Subramanian, who was the first to break the story. He has also admitted that he was the journalist's secret informant who operated under the pseudonym of 'Swedish Deep Throat.' Mr Lindstrom led the investigations into the Bofors-India gun deal.
The Bofors case dates back to 1986, when Swiss arms manufacturer Bofors landed a 15 billion dollar contract to supply Howitzer guns to India. A year later, Swiss media began reporting that the company had paid massive kickbacks to Indian politicians and defence officials. Reacting to the reports, then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had assured Parliament that that was not the case. The Bofors scandal however cost him the general election in 1989.
In his interview on hoot.org, Mr Lindstrom said there was no evidence to suggest that former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had taken any bribe in the guns deal. He has however alleged that Mr Gandhi "watched the massive cover-up" in India and Sweden and "did nothing."
Mr Lindstrom has also talked about Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrochi, who was believed to be one of the major players in the Bofors scam. He said the evidence against Mr Quattrochi was "conclusive" as the bribes paid by Bofors landed in his account. "Nobody in Sweden or Switzerland was allowed to interrogate him," he added.
In 1990, when the BJP-led NDA was in power, the CBI filed a complaint against Mr Quattrochi in the case. The charges against him included serving as a conduit for bribes. Others named in the CBI case included Win Chadha, who was Bofors' representative in India. Mr Chadha died in 2001.
Mr Quattrochi left India in 1993 to avoid being arrested. In March 2011, a Delhi court allowed the CBI to close its criminal case against him after the investigating agency submitted that after 25 years and Rs 250 crores, it had not been able to get Mr Quattrocchi extradited to India, despite appeals in both Malaysia and Argentina.