Title: Bofors, with
bated breadth
Author: Chitra Subramaniam
Publication: The Indian
Express
Date: January 3, 2000
Why don't you write about
what it really was? People don't know what the issues are any more'', said
the editor of this newspaper as we spoke about l'affaire Bofors. Thirteen
years is a long time to despair and hope. The last set of documents some
100 in number from Switzerland arrived in India two weeks ago. The first
batch of documents had reached India in November 1990.
The second batch some
500 pieces was sent in early 1997. They tell a story of corruption in high
places in both India and Sweden.
This time around, too,
I join my friends in Sweden and Switzerland and wait with bated breath
for justice to be done. The real issue is not the sum of Rs 64 crore that
was traced or the Rs 250 crore (by the 1986 value) that Bofors, the Swedish
arms manufacturer, was required to pay to Indians and others as bribes
for a gun contract. The real issue is one of betrayal by a government,
a system, a Prime Minister.
For over 32 months beginning
April 6, 1986, when the Swedish national radio first detailedpart of the
bribes, the scandal crippled one of the most popular governments elected
by the Indian people. The value of the gun contract was $1.3 billion for
410 field howitzers, ammunition of six types, fire control equipment and
technical literature.
There was also a licence
production contract for almost double that amount. It was the biggest ever
contract to come Sweden's way. Contract in hand, chief Bofors negotiator
Martin Ardbo returned to Karlskogo (where Bofors is) and unfurled an Indian
flag. The bribes were built into the bid. The Indian taxpayer lost.
I remained with the story
for 11 years when the first boxes of secret Swiss bank papers were handed
over to India in January 1997. They were tumultuous years when I was caught
between fear and hope. Fear because there were threats to my life and that
of family. When the threats failed, there were inducements including monies
secretly paid into my private bank accounts in Switzerland. Hope came through
my principal source in Sweden Sting when Igained access to over 300 documents
through 1987-1988 that blew the lid off the payoffs.
New Delhi did what it
does best at such times: it shot the messenger. In Parliament, then Prime
Minister Rajiv Ga-ndhi declared that neither he nor anyone of his family
had taken any money in the deal. The world wondered why he was denying
what he had not been accused of. In an interview to me in 1991, the late
Ge-neral Krishnaswami Sundarji (then chief of Army staff) said that he
had be-en told by the former minister of state for Defence Arun Singh that
all this was being done to ``save the skin of one man''.Following the radio
broadcast, the Swedish National Audit Bureau (SNAB) constituted an inquiry.
The SNAB report detailed three tracks of payments.
Bofors had, at the time
of inquiry, paid 319 million Swedish crowns in connection with the Indian
deal. The monies were paid into secret Swiss banks accounts called Lotus
(Swiss Bank Corporation), Tulip (manufacturers Hannover Trust Company)
and Mont Blanc (CreditSuisse) who together got some 80 million SEK. These
payments were routed through what was called the Pitco-Moresco-Moineau
track after the companies they were linked to. Sting's documents showed
later that this track was linked to the NRI business family the Hindujas
who denied it.
The real breakthrough
came in April 1988 when, during one of my trips to Stockholm, Sting let
me have the first set of documents. These established that Bofors had lied
to India when it said no commissions had been paid for the deal. The documents,
which included banks slips, internal Bofors papers, contracts between Bofors
and the recipients as well as account numbers and names of banks in Switzerland
into which the bribes had been sent, exposed the official story. The evidence
established commission payments to three fronts Svenska Incorporated, Pitco-Moresco-Moineau
and AE Servi- ces.
The payments to Sve-nska
continued at least until March 1987. Coded payments on the Lotus-Tulip-Mont
Blanc track were made for some 80million SEK.In 1988, Sting engineered
another series of leaks. The documents included the SNAB report, diaries
of Arbdo, the Bofors chief executive who negotiated the contract and the
bribes with India as well as another string of payment documents. One diary
entry was a smoking howitzer. Arbdo had noted on July 2, 1987, that ``Bob
had talked with Gandhi Trustee Lawyer.'' Sting and I looked at each other
as he translated this crucial entry. Nothing was said.
In another note, Arbdo
said he was worried about ``Q because of his links to R''. Q for Quattrocchi.
R for Rajiv Gandhi.
The Opposition was frothing
in the mouth. They resigned en masse in the run up to the 1989 elections
and took the high moral ground. After they won the elections, however,
many of them, by then ministers in the National Front, did exactly what
they had accused the previous government of.
Between 1990 and 1997,
there were many attempts from India to scuttle the investigations. The
most famous one was l'affaire Solanki. In lateFebruary 1992 my Swiss source,
Snowman, faxed me a copy of a letter from India's Foreign Minister Madhavsinh
Solanki asking his counterpart in this country to stop the investigation.
He had slipped this missive into the Swiss minister's pocket when the two
met at Davos. Solanki denied this. I produced the letter. He resigned.
To date, no one has questioned Solanki.
On January 21, 1997,
when officials from the Swiss Justice and Police Ministry handed over some
500 documents, hope was revived. Swedish official Sten Lindstrom, speaking
to the Indian Express, said interrogating Ottavio Quattrocchi was the key
to the story. Quattrochhi was a salesman for an Italian company in India
and his rise to fortune has been traced to his links with the Gandhi family,
specially Italy-born Sonia Gandhi.
Successive governments
without exception have launched what can only be called `Mickey Mouse'
investigations and been silenced by the exigencies of minority-government
politics, whatever that means. For example, thecritical set of do-cuments
irrefutably linking Italian business Ottavio Quattrocchi and Win Ch-adha
(former Bofors agent in India) to the bribes have been in India since January
1997, waiting for action.
Will the courts do their
job this time? I remain an optimist. In the meantime, now that the Swiss
courts by far the world's toughest have established the fact of the bribes,
how about getting the money back?
(These are the personal
views of the author, a former Indian Express correspondent and principal
investigator of the story, now with the WHO)
