The Interpol has removed the red corner notice issued against Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who was being sought in India
for criminal charges for acting as a conduit for bribes in the Rs 64-crore Bofors scandal. ( Watch )
This comes just three weeks before the Congress-led UPA government's term ends.
The Italian businessman no longer figures in the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) list of wanted persons and the 12-year Interpol red corner notice against the lone surviving suspect in the Bofors payoff case has been withdrawn from the agency’s website after the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) appeal.
The CBI will formally inform the court of the same on April 30. "The case has been under trial in the courts since 1999. CBI has taken action on the basis of legal advice of the highest order. We will inform the competent court on the next date of hearing (April 30, 2009)," CBI spokesman Harsh Bahal said here today.
The CBIs decision is based on the legal opinion sent by Attorney General Milon Banerjee to the government in which he describes the notice as "a continuing embarrassment."
Banerjee writes: "The CBI is under an obligation to have the matters set right at the Interpol level as there is no basis on which the RCN can continue...I am of the firm opinion that immediate action should be taken to withdraw the Red Corner Notice".
Quattrochi's counsel had already sought the removal of the notice in October 2008.
Quattrocchi's role in Bofors scam, and his proximity to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi through his wife Sonia Gandhi, is thought to have contributed to the defeat of the Congress Party in the 1989 elections.
Ten years later (1999), the CBI named Quattrocchi in a chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribe and on he basis of a 1997 non-bailable warrant, the agency sought a red corner notice against him The case against him was strengthened in June 2003, when Interpol revealed two bank accounts, 5A5151516M and 5A5151516L, held by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria with the BSI AG bank, London, containing Euros 3 million and $1 million, a "curiously large savings for a salaried executive".
In January 2006, these frozen bank accounts were unexpectedly released by country's law ministry, apparently without the consent of the CBI which had asked for them to be frozen.
Reacting to the development, Congress spokesperson Abhishek Singhvi called the Bofors case ‘a dead horse that the BJP has been flogging.”
“BJP has been unnecessarily dragging Rajiv Gandhi’s name,” Singhvi said.
BJP senior leader L K Advani trained his guns on CBI for dropping the businessman’s name and demanded a probe into the agency's role during the last five years.
"This is a serious decision. It is not a question of Quattrocchi alone but the entire role of the agency during the last five years which should be probed. It is a very serious issue. They have become the "dastak" or "handtool" in the hands of politicians," Advani, while campaigning in his constituency, said.
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