New Delhi, February 26
The Supreme Court today took cognizance of a petition against alleged attempt by the UPA government and the CBI to suppress the information about the arrest of Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, an accused in Rs 64 crore Bofors pay-off case in Argentina, and directed the agency to file a comprehensive report within a week about it.
“It is a serious matter”, a Bench of Justice C.K. Thakker and Justice V.S. Sirpurkar told additional-solicitor general Gopal Subramaniam, appearing for the CBI.
The court said even during the last hearing on February 12 the agency had taken a stand that there was not “much evidence” against Quattrocchi, apparently asking the agency then why he was detained in Argentina.
It reminded the CBI counsel that despite the agency’s stand on February 12, a notice was issued to the agency on an application, raising the issue of the CBI allowing de-freezing of Quattrocchi’s two London accounts in January, 2006.
In a petition filed by advocate Ajay Agrawal, he alleged that though Quattrocchi was arrested at Iguazu airport in Argentina by the Interpol on February 6, the government and the CBI had deliberately “withheld” the information from the Supreme Court, which amounts to its contempt.
Taking on board Agrawal’s fresh application, naming the cabinet secretary, the Ministry of External Affairs and the CBI director as respondents, the court directed that the agency should place before it a detailed reply within a week.
Sensing the tough stand taken by the court, Subramaniam said the CBI would submit the report giving details about each development. “We got information moment by moment and documents were in Spanish which had to be translated,” he said. However, he refrained from disclosing the
date when the CBI had got the initial information about the detention of Quattrocchi, against whom a “Red Corner” notice was issued by the Interpol at the request of the CBI after he had left India in 1993 apprehending his arrest in the Bofors case. Quattrocchi, a close family friend of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, had then shifted his base to Kuala Lumpur for nearly five years and fought a long-drawn legal battle against the CBI’s effort to get him extradited to India. But the CBI lost the battle after the Malaysian Supreme Court rejected its extradition plea.
He swiftly moved to Italy and succeeded in lifting the freeze on his two accounts in a London bank, which were frozen at the request of a special CBI court in Delhi in the wake agency’s pending investigation against him.
