The opposition slammed the central government on Tuesday for going out of its way to help Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi.
The opposition slammed the central government on Tuesday for going out of its way to help Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, who is the main accused in the
Bofors scam.
The government told the Supreme Court on Tuesday that it had decided to close all cases against fugitive Quattrocchi, accused of receiving Rs7 billion in illegal kickbacks in the Bofors gun purchase scandal of the mid-’80s. Quattrocchi is an old friend of the Gandhi family.
“It was expected. The government has been trying from the very beginning to bail him out because he knows too much,” BJP spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
“Look at the series of events. The CBI was not allowed to file an appeal against a court order passed in 2005, money in a London bank account of Quattrocchi was released in his favour based on a collusive report of the law ministry and the then law minister publicly said there was no case, in Argentina, an order was passed refusing extradition to Quattrocchi but no appeal was allowed to be filed again,” said Prasad.
The Congress on its part claimed that the case was being withdrawn because there was nothing left in it. Manish Tewari, Congress spokesperson, said, “Bofors is a ghost or a phantom, which the opposition brings up repeatedly for political purposes. Whenever the matter went before a court of law either in India or abroad it never stood the test of law,” he said.
Not everybody bought his argument. CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat termed the Bofors case a prime example of how “legal procrastination is used to scuttle cases which may prove embarrassing for the government”.
“The CBI is used as a political tool by the Congress government and therefore whenever it comes to power, the Bofors pay-off case gets weakened,” senior JD(U) leader and spokesperson Arun Srivastav said.
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