The ghost of ‘Q' mentioned in Bofors managing director Martin Ardbo's private diary, which was relied upon by Chitra Subramainam, a Europe-based Indian journalist, to expose the bribery scandal in 1987-89, has resurfaced. Italian business executive Ottavio Quattrocchi is back in the news.
Three weeks after Subramaniam's book, Boforsgate: A Journalist's Pursuit Of Truth, hit the stands, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia has now demanded Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi's resignations as Members of Parliament. The allegations are old and have been oft-repeated (in his order related to Bofors on November 14, 2022, Special Judge Prem Kumar had detailed how since 1974, the Quattrocchis had regularly interacted with the Gandhis over ‘Italian food' and how their children grew up together).
There seems to be renewed interest in the Bofors case, which lingered in courts for 25 years before in 2011, a judge in Delhi's Tis Hazari courts discharged Quattrocchi from the payoffs case after allowing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to withdraw prosecution against him (while the CBI didn't make any headway, an Income Tax Tribunal had established that Rs 41 lakh had been paid in bribes to Quattrocchi).
Letter Rogatory Sent To US
The CBI last month made a judicial request to the United States after sending a ‘Letter Rogatory' (LR)—a written request sent by the court of one country to the that of another country to obtain assistance in the investigation or prosecution of a criminal matter—requesting information from private investigator Michael Hershman of an agency called Fairfax. Hershman had expressed willingness to share with Indian agencies crucial details about the Bofors bribery scandal way back in 1988.
Sources say the process to send the LR was initiated on October 14, 2024, and it was sent in February after approval from the court concerned. The CBI has also informed the special court hearing the agency's plea for further probe into the alleged bribery case about the recent developments. So, ‘Q' may soon be back in the limelight.
Emergence of ‘Q'
Ottavio Quattrocchi had come to India as a representative of Italian petroleum company Eni and engineering giant Snamprogetti, both firms of repute, in the mid-1960s. His name surfaced in Parliament in 1981-82 after Haldor Topsoe, a firm acquired by Snamprogetti, in September 1980 bagged the prestigious contract for consultancy for setting up the world's largest gas-based urea plant in Thal Vaishet on the outskirts of Mumbai. The project, set up under public sector company Rashtriya Chemicals & Fertilisers (RCF), had been under consideration since 1976. The contractor chosen for Thal Vaishet was to be a frontrunner for a dozen more Bombay High gas-based fertilizer plants that came up in later years.
An American Firm, CF Braun, had been shortlisted by a Committee of Secretaries of the Union government—the change of regime in 1977 necessitated a review and CF Braun continued to head the list in the Janata regime as well. The ouster of Morarji Desai in 1979 saw yet another review by H.N. Bahuguna, the Petroleum Minister of Charan Singh regime. The choice of CF Braun persisted.
In January 1980, when Indira Gandhi returned to power, a review panel was set up yet again and CF Braun, represented in India by a firm headed by Narendra N. Kapadia (better known as Mama Kapadia), a former Sheriff of Bombay and his nephew, Nanak Sheth, continued to be the prime choice initially.
Sanjay Gandhi died in June 1980. Power equations in New Delhi changed swiftly. In September 1980, the contract was awarded to Haldor Topsoe, a Snamprogetti affiliate, which had not figured in the deliberations of any of the panels hitherto. Quattrocchi's proximity to the ‘Powers that Be' started buzzing in Lutyens' Delhi's grapevine.
‘Q' Surfaces In Parliament
Congress (S) stalwart K.P. Unnikrishnan (who later was Cabinet Minister under Vishwanath Pratap Singh) raised the issue of award of contract for RCF Thal Vaishet in the Lok Sabha and placed on the table of the House a copy of the deal file (authenticated by him, as per Lok Sabha rules in vogue since similar disclosures by Feroze Gandhi on the Mundhra scandal).
The name of Ottavio Quattrocchi surfaced in India's political discourse, thus. Though his proximity to Sonia Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi was talk of the town, it did not crop up during the debate.
All such parliamentary disclosures in the past had resulted in furore, putting the government on the back foot. Feroze Gandhi's exposé had resulted in the resignation of Jawaharlal Nehru's Finance Minister T.T. Krishnamachari. The government of Nehru's daughter chose not to play on the backfoot. It reacted by asking the CBI to probe the leakage of the government file cited by Unnikrishnan. An Official Secrets Act case was initiated. Mama Kapadia and Nanak Sheth were arrested.
With the Thal Vishet deal, a new phase began not only in the petro-chemical industry with Snamprogetti snapping up one contract after another, but even in Parliamentary politics. Disclosure based on clinching evidence in the form of photocopies of official files also became a thing of yore. Innuendo or citing ‘disclosures from abroad' became the norm for raising allegations,
‘Extra-Technical Considerations'
The Estimates Committee of the 7th Lok Sabha took note of the matter as the dilly-dallying in decision-making had caused a cost overrun. The reports of the Estimates Committee and of the Committee on Public Undertakings, which looked into Thal Vaishet, were tabled in the Lok Sabha on April 16, 1982 (21st report of the panel).
The parliamentary panels noted that the then secretary of the concerned ministry, K.V. Ramanathan, when asked if the last-minute change in the choice of consultant for Thal Vaishet had been necessitated by ‘superior technical advice', had replied, “No, Sir, the change was necessitated by what I may term as superior extra-technical considerations.”
Ramanathan was senior-most in line of succession for the post of Cabinet Secretary. He was superseded (the first such supersession at apex level of bureaucracy) and accommodated in Planning Commission.
Family Guests Of Quattrocchi's
In December 1980, the Maino family from Italy visited India for Christmas. Perhaps it was thought that putting up foreign nationals in the Prime Minister's House wouldn't be prudent, thus the guests stayed in the Quattrocchi home in Friends Colony. Moreover, as Sanjay Gandhi had died merely six months earlier, Christmas was not celebrated at Indira Gandhi's home.
Ottavio and Maria Quattrocchi were regular invitees to Sunday brunches hosted by Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi on the lawns of the Prime Minister's House. Their son, Massimo, worked in Bengaluru as a representative of a Luxembourg firm in the first part of the UPA regime.
Massimo Quattrocchi's trip to New Delhi in 2006 and his ‘accidental' meeting at a party hosted by an MP with a member of the Sonia Gandhi family, while his father's extradition was being sought in Argentine by the CBI, had caused a buzz in Lutyens' grapevine.
Arrested due to Interpol's Red Corner notice on Bofors, Quattrocchi was let off by a court in Argentina. The judge recorded that “India did not present proper legal documents” and put the burden of paying Quattrocchi's legal expenses on the Indian Embassy.
‘Q' is back in the news today. Will the LR sent to the US yield new information? Or will ‘shoot and scoot', a competency of the Bofors howitzer that helped India oust Pakistan from Kargil heights in 1999, remain the leitmotif of L'affaire Bofors?
PS: Quattrocchi passed away in Milan, Italy, in July 2013. He had slipped away from India quietly, taking a midnight flight, soon after P.V. Narasimha Rao became Prime Minister in 1991.
(Shubhabrata Bhattacharya is a retired editor and a public affairs commentator)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author
