No More Bofors

— STEN LINDSTROM, the whistleblower in Bofors case in conversation with Eminent Journalist Chitra Subramaiam, The Bofors story, 25 years after, http://thehoot.org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5884

A lmost a year after the apex court of Bharat rejected the CBI plea seeking condonation of the 13 year delay in filing the appeal against the May 31,

 

2005 judgement of the high court in Bofors case, we have

pulled off a diplomatic coup through extradition of Christian Michel James in the AugustaWestland VVIP chopper deal scam. Significantly, just a couple of days before the actual extradition, Prime Minister Modi proposed to strengthen cooperation across G-20 countries to deal comprehensively with the menace of fugitive economic offenders with his nine-point agenda.

 

The operation ‘Unicorn’ carried out under the guidance of National Security Advisor and being coordinated by interim CBI director M Nageshwar Rao is another specimen of finesse with which this Government is executing its foreign policy objectives. That real question is: What should we achieved out of this extradition?

 

In the Bofors case, inability to get the middleman Quattrocchi was the major failure. Despite joint parliament committee giving the report, CBI filing the chargesheet that included the name of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and the Supreme Court stalling all attempts to squash the complaints, inability to file the appeal and failure to connect the dots in the investigation certainly weakened the case with obvious political twists and turns.

 

What we have witnessed till date in the AugustaWestland case is not very different. Though the then UPA Government was forced to scrap the deal amidst allegations of a series of corruption scandals, the real money trail could never be found. The case investigated in Italy at various levels, from a first-degree trial, two appellate trials and a Supreme Court ruling has thrown different verdicts. Though the final verdict explains the absence of conclusive evidence, the 2016 appellate court verdict talks in detail about the links of kickbacks delivered in Bharat. The testimony of AgustaWestland chopper company chief Giuseppe Orsi and the affixed handwritten note of Michel exchanged to Haschke on how to distribute the total commission of 30 Million Euro clearly indicated corruption which was turned around by 2018.

 

The extradition of Christian Michel has provided us with a new opportunity to investigate the case. Till now, former Air Force Chief and his family members and businessman Gautam Khaitan were nabbed as the prime accused in the case from Bharatiya side. The real links of bureaucrats and politicians are still to be explored. As different levels of investigations have given different leads in the case, connecting the dots will be a major challenge for the investigation agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate.

 

The way Congress-supported lawyers have jumped to defend Michel and as some media groups have already started seeing politics in this, the investigation agencies will have to ensure that there is no Bofors-like derailment. Some have also tried to link it to Rafale. In such a situation, there should be a decisive effort to seek conclusive evidence from Michel.

 

The Defence Deals are generally considered to be fishy, not only in Bharat but also all over the world. The Modi Government by formalising the lobbying process through registration of defence product promoting companies has cleared the major source of manipulation and kickback transactions. Getting Michel is also a display of strong resolve in nabbing the culprits. What will be challenging is cracking the tough nut like Michel as early as possible without allowing AugustaWestland to be another Bofors.