DATE=10/22/1999
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=INDIA/BOFORS SCANDAL (L-ONLY)
NUMBER=2-255367
BYLINE=ANJANA PASRICHA
DATELINE=NEW DELHI
CONTENT=
VOICED AT:
INTRO: Indian investigators have filed the first
criminal charges in a corruption-and-bribery scandal
involving an arms purchase deal that shook India's
political establishment more than a decade ago.
Former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi has been named
among the suspects. From New Delhi, Anjana Pasricha
reports.
TEXT: The Central Bureau of Investigation has charged
a senior Indian civil servant, [S.K Bhatnagar], an
Indian arms agent [Win Chadha] and an Italian
businessman [Ottavio Quattrocchi] with accepting
bribes from the Swedish arms company Bofors, which
signed a contract to sell artillery guns to India in
1986. A Swedish executive [Martin Ardbo] who headed
the Bofors company at that time is also being
prosecuted in the kickback scandal.
Rajiv Gandhi, the former prime minister who was
assassinated eight years ago, also is named in the
charges.
The scandal erupted in 1987 when Swedish radio
reported the Bofors firm had paid more than 50-million
dollars in bribes to secure a contract for a one-
point-four-billion-dollar sale of field guns to the
Indian army, against stiff international competition.
The bribes were paid into secret Swiss bank accounts.
Indian authorities obtained documents relating to the
accounts after a seven-year legal battle with Swiss
authorities.
The scandal created a political uproar in India, and
Bofors became a symbol of political corruption. It
tarnished the image of Rajiv Gandhi, leading to his
party's defeat in the 1989 general elections, two
years before his assassination.
Investigations into the Bofors case have been slow,
and the center of much political controversy.
Governments led or supported by the Congress Party
have been accused of trying to bury the case. Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's government speeded up
investigations into the case.
The case could become a fresh political liability for
Italian-born opposition leader Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv
Gandhi's widow. Not only was her late husband named
in the charges, but the Italian businessman accused of
bribery is also a close friend of the Gandhi family.
He left India soon after the scandal erupted. Indian
media have speculated that Mrs. Gandhi entered
politics to block prosecutors in the Bofors case.
The Congress party is refusing to comment on the
charges. Party spokesman Kapil Sibal calls them the
result of a "13-year-long legal and political joke."
(Signed)
NEB/AP/WTW
22-Oct-1999 11:54 AM EDT (22-Oct-1999 1554 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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