Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
tiny amount compared with today's massive billion-dollar corruption, but the case has re-
verberated ever since through India's political system and the courts. It contributed to the
defeat of Gandhi's government in 1989 because of suspicions (denied and unproven) that
those close to him may have benefited, and it has embarrassed the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty
for years.
When he came to power in 1984, Sanjay having died three years earlier, Rajiv disbanded
the group of three or four people that had been handling his mother's arrangements. This
may have helped the Bofors scandal to become so significant - possibly because the new
arrangements were not so secure, or because someone who had been involved encouraged
leaks. Statements made in recent years by retired government officials in India and Sweden
who were involved at the time suggest that, even if he was innocent himself, Rajiv knew
who had received Bofors' bribes and that he did nothing to stop it. MPs gleefully pointed
out in the 1980s that the code name for one of the Swiss bank accounts used for the bribes
was Lotus, which in Sanskrit means Rajiv.
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No one claimed that the wrong guns had been chosen - indeed, they have served India
well, especially in the 1999 Kargil border war with Pakistan in Kashmir. The alleged crime
was that money had been paid to middlemen to facilitate the deal. The accusations were
first made by Swedish Radio and became a scandal in that country, which helped to keep
the story alive in India where it was led by two campaigning newspaper editors, Arun
Shourie of
The Indian Express
and N. Ram of
The Hindu
. It was alleged that Ottavio Quat-
trocchi, an Italian executive then based in Delhi for Snamprogetti, who with his wife was
close to Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, acted as a middleman in the deal and received kickbacks.
Quattrocchi denied this but was behaving at the time as though he had an inside track on
fertiliser plant, gas pipeline and other contracts, where Snamprogetti did controversially
well. After long legal battles, including attempts to bring him back to India, the inquiries
were closed and cases against him were dismissed in 2011. He died in 2013, underlining
the closure.
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Unbanned Agents
The specific point on which the Bofors saga blew up was that Rajiv Gandhi, in an attempt
to clean up corruption, had banned the use of agents and the payment of commissions
on defence deals (though this did not rule out employment of consultants to fix appoint-
ments).
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That was, as it turned out, one of his most well-meant but useless moves. Many agents
are well-known and are so visible that it makes a mockery of the government's official line
