NEWDELHI: Significantly, Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, which concluded that Win Chadha and Ottavio Quattrocchi received kickbacks in the 1987 Bofors deal, has said that kickbacks of Rs 41 crore were paid to the late Indian partner and the Italian businessman in the Rs 1,500-crore deal for 400 155-mm howitzer guns.
Known to be close to the Gandhi family, Quattrocchi left India in 1993 even as a CBI case was filed on kickbacks in the deal.
Quattrocchi has never appeared before any court in the country. The CBI had failed on two occasions to get Quattrocchi extradited -- first from Malaysia in 2003 and then from Argentina in 2007.
The order mentions that a commission of Rs 32.66-crore was transferred to M/s Svenska Inc, Panama, which was traced to Chadha, and was credited in an account of Swiss Bank Corporation, Geneva.
Similarly, Rs 8.57 crore was transferred to A E Services Limited, c/o Mayo Associates SA, Geneva, which was opened only a fortnight earlier on August 20, 1986.
The tribunal order also observed that Chadha and Quattrocchi had frequently transferred the funds received from one account to another to avoid detection and to obliterate the money-trail.
The tribunal’s observations in the Bofors episode has come at a time when UPA government is battling various allegations of corruption 2-G Spectrum scam, Commonwealth Games scam etc.
“In our view, to enforce the rule of law,these steps were desirable to bring all the relevant income tax violations to a logical end by the Income Tax Department.
Inaction in this regard may lead to a non-existent undesirable and detrimental notion that India is a soft state and one can meddle with its tax laws with impunity,” the Tribunal observed.
“Bofors acted in violation of the Indian defence policies and rules and harmed the public exchequer, besides committing breach of propriety,” according to the order, by the tribunal’s judicial member R P Tolani and accountant member R C Sharma.
They also stated that the agents had helped Bofors in getting the contract by “dubious means” with the help of local contacts and support within the Indian military authorities, the bureaucracy and concerned politicians.
“The illicit payments to the agents and others were said to have been made by transactions in secret bank accounts in Switzerland.”
The tribunal order come a day ahead of a likely decision by a Delhi court in connection with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) plea seeking to drop criminal proceedings against Quattrocchi on the grounds that there is no evidence against him and that persisting with the case will serve no purpose.