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Argentina not to extradite Q El Dorado (Argentina), June 9 Judge Harichi Doi of the First Court here, who gave his verdict after hearing arguments for two days, will give detailed reasons for the judgment on June 13, Indian Ambassador to Argentina Pramathesh Rath said. The court, however, barred the 68-year-old, who was arrested in Argentina on February 6 on an Interpol warrant but was released on a conditional bail, from leaving the country till June 18. By that date India can approach the Supreme Court in Buenos Aires to challenge the judgment. Rath said in the Argentine system, the public prosecutor was obliged to appeal in the Supreme Court unless India specifically asked her not to do so. This is the second time that India has failed to get Quattrocchi extradited. About six years ago, a Malaysian court had rejected a similar request after he was detained in Kuala Lumpur on an Interpol alert. From there, the Italian businessman had gone to his hometown in Italy. Visibly pleased with the verdict, Quattrocchi’s lawyer Alejandro Freeland said: “We have worked really hard. we were always confident because India did not have any case.” He said the CBI’s case was “weak” and it was time “to stop the persecution and harassment” of his client. Quattrocchi faces charges of taking bribes to swing a Rs 1,437-crore gun deal in 1986 in favour of Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors. Meanwhile, India will move the Argentine Supreme Court against a lower court’s decision to reject the CBI’s appeal for extradition of Bofors case accused Ottavio Quattrocchi, a lawyer representing the Indian authorities said on Saturday. — PTI
Q case: BJP guns for UPA New Delhi, June 9 Senior BJP leader V. K. Malhotra alleged that the government had botched up the plea for his deportation to face trial in India in connection with the Bofors scandal. Malhotra, whose party had sought a debate in the budget session over Quattrocchi’s detention in Argentina, said the opposition would lodge its protest both inside and outside Parliament over the government’s handling of the case. A debate on this matter could not take place in the last session. But surely, the government will have to answer questions over Quattrocchi in the next session, he stated. The government, he alleged, had deliberately tried to save him from facing trial in India. He cited freezing of Quattrocchi’s accounts in London last year, which had been frozen during the NDA rule as part of the investigation into the Bofors gun deal. Another BJP leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi alleged that the Narasimha Rao government, too, had protected the Italian businessman from the investigation process in India. The Congress has for the past more than 10 years been casual, soft and protective towards
Quattrocchi. This government, led by the Congress, kept his detention in Argentina under the wraps for almost a month. There has always been an attempt by the Congress, whenever it has been in power, to bail him out, Maqvi asserted. The BJP, he added, would fine-tune its strategy on the issue during its national executive meeting scheduled later this month.
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