Daily Pioneer; Abraham Thomas; New Delhi; Tuesday, April 5, 2011,
The Bofors scam is back to haunt the Centre.
This time, it is about the inflated expense account the Centre had produced in Tis Hazari courts a month back to arrange an escape route for Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi in the `64-crore gun deal scam. The CBI had advanced the same argument of wasteful expenses and cited the same amount of `250 cr before the Delhi High Court in 2005 to bail out the Hinduja brothers as well.
The CBI stuck to the argument that Bofors case was a huge drain on the public exchequer with `250 crore already spent on its investigation since January 22, 1990, when the FIR was filed. But documents accessed under the Right to Information Act by the petitioner, advocate Ajay Agarwal, reveal that the figure was a façade as the real expenses incurred by the agency were just over `5 crore.
The fresh disclosure has shown that superior courts, both the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court, besides the trial court, were deceived to accept the figure of `250 crore as one of the main grounds to drop further proceedings, as was evident by the trial court order of March 4, 2011, when the CBI plea to discharge Quattrocchi was allowed.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vinod Yadav, who exonerated Quattrocchi on the ground of heavy expenses incurred by CBI, stated in his 73-page order, “In the case of Mr Quattrocchi, as against the alleged kickbacks of `64 crore he received, the CBI had by 2005 already spent around `250 crore on the investigation, which is sheer wastage of public money.”
Similar stand was taken by CBI when it defended quashing of proceedings against AB Bofors (the gun manufacturer) and Hinduja brothers before the Delhi High Court. On May 31, 2005, then Justice RS Sodhi set aside all proceedings against the above accused while quoting the `250-crore expense figure. It said, “Before parting, I must express my disapproval at the investigation that went on for 14 years and I was given to understand that it cost the exchequer nearly `250 crore.”
Responding to the RTI query, the agency said, “Expenditure on investigational efforts in foreign countries was `1,67,37, 624. Payments made to special counsels and other legal expenses amounted to `2,84,34,361 and an amount of Malaysian Ringgit 4,18,711 which roughly adds up to `65 lakh.” In addition, the agency incurred an expense of `25,57,225 on translation work, since the agency undertook two failed attempts to extradite Quattrocchi from Malaysia and lately from Argentina.
These expenses add up to a cumulative figure of over `5.42 crore. What has further exposed the CBI’s double standards is another set of documents accessed by Agarwal on the file of the CBI where the agency itself described `250 crore figure mentioned by Justice Sodhi in his judgment as a “superfluous remark” that required to be challenged before the Supreme Court. Incidentally, the Centre never filed the appeal against the Delhi HC decision. Instead, six years later, the same figure of `250 crore was chanted before the Delhi trial court as a defence to bail out Quattrocchi.
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