WINDING UP CHARGES - CONGRESS LETS MR Q WALK FREE
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Editorial
The Pioneer Edit Desk
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Congress lets Mr Q walk free
In removing the name of Mr Ottavio Quattrocchi from the
Central Bureau of Investigation's 'most wanted' list and
recommending that Interpol need no longer put out an alert
for him at international airports and national borders, the
Congress-led UPA Government has finally and inexorably
buried the ghost of the Bofors bribery scandal. Little
progress has been made in the case in about a decade, ever
since it was discovered, in 1997, that the dubious payments
from Bofors to a series of intermediaries eventually turned
up in an account controlled by the Italian 'business agent'
known for his proximity to the Gandhi family and who walked
in and out of Government offices when the Bofors deal was
finalised in the mid-1980s. Mr Quattrocchi did not deny the
money was his; he only said he had been paid for another
deal, completely unrelated to the Bofors field gun
transaction. He was asked to present himself for
questioning but refused to come back to India and lived as
a fugitive in Malaysia for several years. In the past five
years, the Congress Government has done much to bail him
out. It facilitated the release of the bribe money from
frozen bank accounts and thus allowed Mr Quattrocchi access
to his dirty, ill-gotten millions. Then, when he was
detained by law authorities in Argentina in accordance with
the Interpol alert, the Government did its best to make a
mess of the case, the CBI even claiming it could not
translate documents from Spanish to English! Not
surprisingly, the infamous Mr Q walked free. Now, following
AttorneyGeneral Milon Banerjee's 'suggestion' that the Red
Corner Notice in the name of Mr Quattrocchi is a
"continuing embarrassment" for India, the CBI has
completely exonerated him. There is a point here. What
purpose is served by seeking the detention of a man if you
don't have the political resolve to extradite him, if you
don't believe he is guilty of wrong-doing, if you don't
believe a crime was committed in the first place? Between
Mr Banerjee, Law Minister Hansraj Bhardwaj, a spineless
CBI, a feckless Prime Minister and certain family friends
of the Quattrocchis, the Congress leadership and its bunch
of loyalists have made a mockery of India's criminal
justice system. The final liberation of the thuggish
Sicilian con artiste is the UPA regime's farewell gift to
its henchmen -- its very own version of 'winding up
charges', the original euphemism for the Bofors bribes, as
some may remember.
It is a reflection of the priorities of the Congress that
while numerous other issues -- from economic reforms to a
modern, enlightened higher education policy, from the
nuclear deal to crippling the war against terrorism -- led
it to compromise with recalcitrant Ministers, entrenched
lobbies, difficult allies and delay or neglect action, it
was resolute and determined on using its term in office to
completely whitewash the Bofors chapter. The CBI was not
given permission to appeal against judgements that had gone
against it on even technical grounds. Mr Quattrocchi and
his money were systematically unshackled. It was brazen
behaviour, but the Congress got away with it, all the time
claiming the CBI was an independent body. One wonders how
people like Mr Somnath Chatterjee and Mr S Jaipal Reddy,
Bofors-era crusaders who know the facts but have now become
hand-maidens of the Congress, can sleep peacefully at
night.
http://dailypioneer.com/172811/Winding-up-charges.html
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