CBI rushes to get Quattrocchi

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) will send six officials to Argentina to negotiate the extradition of Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, an accused in the Rs 64-crore Bofors kickback scandal.

The CBI has to hurry, as there is a 30-day deadline for making a formal request to the Argentinean government.

The External Affairs Ministry will forward the CBI’s request to Argentina with which India does not have an extradition treaty.

The BJP has alleged that the Government is going slow, but CBI Director Vijay Shankar on Saturday dismissed the allegations and said there was no “delay”.

He also denied that Quattrocchi was detained on February 6, but the CBI made announcement on Friday.

The CBI first verified if the detained man in a prison in Argentina’s Misiones province was Quattrocchi before making an announcement, he said.

Quattrocchi allegedly got kickbacks from Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors in return fro contract to sell 155mm Howitzer guns to the Indian army.

He had left India in 1993 and has been pursued by the CBI since then.

The news of his detention has come as a shot in the arm for CBI, which drew flak in January last year after a British bank de-froze his bank account.

The bank action came after the agency failed to provide any evidence to the British Crown Prosecution Service, which had frozen his two bank accounts having three million pounds in July 2003.

Interpol had informed the CBI that the accounts were frozen after the Crown Prosecution Service of London obtained the restraining order against Quattrocchi for operation of the bank accounts.

The accounts were frozen after the CBI had claimed that Quattrocchi had received 712 million dollars from AB Bofors through AE Services, a UK-based company.

After receiving this money, Quattrocchi had been transferring the funds from one account to another and from one jurisdiction to another to avoid detection and evade the due process of law.

Quattrocchi has been missing since a Malaysian lower court had rejected the extradition request of India and allowed him to travel abroad in 2002.