Much Before Bofors, This Deal Brought ‘Q’ Into Limelight
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 …
