Bofors is really a ghost that refuses to go away. Just when it was buried rather effectively through the machinations of successive Congress governments in power at the centre, President Pranab Mukherjee brought it back into focus with his insistence that it was basically a creation of the media. And as the scam had not been pronounced as one by any Indian court, it could not be called a “scandal.”
The President was a senior member of the Congress party then. He was being interviewed by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) on the eve of his visit to that country. He said the above in response to a question on corruption and specific mention of Bofors. The newspaper highlighted this part in the interview, raising the hackles of the government and, of course, that of the Rashtrapati Bhawan. The Indian government tried to get the controversial extract removed stating that it could impact adversely on the proposed presidential visit, a fact revealed by the editors of the newspaper. The editors, of course, decided to go ahead with the story and dismissed the Indian efforts to pressure them to edit the interview.
The Ministry of External Affairs now claims that it had not asked for this reference to Bofors to be removed, but just to ensure that a slip made by the President on Sweden and Switzerland was corrected. This does not seem to be the case with the journalists clear that the the protest lodged by the Indians was basically about the reference to the Bofors deal.
All those involved in the scam have either died or got away. This correspondent had a marathon 10-hour interview with the Swedish investigator Sten Lindstrom in Stockholm after the files had been closed, but the trail of the money had still not gone cold. Lindstrom was clear that the Howitzer guns deal was murky, that money had exchanged hands, that the Indian authorities had successfully blocked every lead, every movement forward on the issue, and that there was this big conspiracy in India to kill the investigation. Lindstrom pointed to bank accounts in London that had been frozen by the British authorities at that time, said that these could help unravel specific details of the deal and lead to the guilty. He said it was essential for the Indian investigators to seize the British accounts and use these to reconstruct the money route. This was not done; instead, the accounts, when unfrozen, were immediately cleaned by the holders with the money trail ending at the door of the concerned banks.
In Lindstrom’s informed opinion Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, very close to Sonia Gandhi and hence late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, was not involved in swinging this particular Howitzer deal in favour of Bofors, as the money paid to him, according to the investigator, was not a very big amount. He said that it seemed more like a “sweetener” for earlier services.
Lindstrom, frustrated at the manner in which the investigations had been blocked, was of the view that the case had reached a near conclusion, and a little effort by the Indian investigators could help crack it. He was worried that the necessary steps would not be taken, and events proved him right. The case was eventually buried by the Indian investigators acting under the directives of the government at the centre.
Bofors was a scandal, and the first case where kickbacks were actually confirmed by Swedish radio. It was a weapons deal that excited journalists both in Sweden and India as the kickback route seemed to go to the very top. The merit, or otherwise, of the gun was lost in the fracas surrounding the deal with Bofors becoming a household name during election campaigns at the time.
Former Prime Minister V.P.Singh, who was then the Finance Minister in the Rajiv Gandhi government, later told this reporter, that he had not cleared the Bofors file. Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi called him and asked him to clear the file after a few weeks, as the deadline for signing the agreement was almost over. Singh said he noted the objections of his Ministry to the deal on the file and sent it to the Prime Minister. He said that he had never seen that file again, although the deal was signed subsequently.
Singh had taken Bofors to the streets after he left the Congress and formed the Janata Dal. Corruption was the election issue that ground the Congress to dust, with Bofors the centrepiece of this campaign. It is imperative to note this, as Bofors was not a media creation at all, it was a real story of kickbacks with sufficient details having emerged through the course of the investigation by the Swedish authorities. It was a big scandal, that had the potency at the time to bring down a government at the centre.
The Swedish newspaper did what any self-respecting publication would. It went with the story, and rejected attempts to muzzle the story. Although of course now the government claims that it was not trying to do that at all.
