On the night of July 29-30, 1993, Ottavio Quattrocchi flew out of Delhi, never to return. He left quietly, escaped really, as part of a deal - the Capital's ever-active whisper circuit held -- between Sonia Gandhi and PV Narasimha Rao, then prime minister.

With Quattrocchi's departure -- apparently aided and abetted by a senior Congress leader from Karnataka -- a vital link to the Bofors mystery was gone. Just a week before he fled, Interpol had told Indian authorities that Quattrocchi was among the parties appealing against the transfer of incriminating Swiss bank documents related to the Bofors bribe accounts.

The documents finally arrived from Switzerland in January 1997. To cut a long story short, they revealed that in September 1986 funds from Bofors' bank account had eventually turned up in Quattrocchi's bank account -- in the name of Colbar Investments, a Panama-registered company of which he was described by a Geneva court as "the economical owner". From there, the money had been transferred to other accounts controlled by Quattrocchi.

Colbar, AE Services, letters rogatory, the Bofors gun bribery scandal: to anybody who lived through the tumultuous late 1980s, these names and nouns would bring back an admittedly tiresome sense of nostalgia. To the two generations of Indians who have come of age since 1987, when the Bofors story first broke, they would make no sense.

The intricacies of the Bofors soap opera are about as relevant to today's India as yesterday's newspaper. Aside from Bofors buffs -- and a mini-industry has come up around those public and private investigators who have doggedly pursued the trail -- Bofors is not an issue that grips many people.

Yet, even if paper chases and bank transfers tend to bewilder, personalities still fascinate. Who was Ottavio Quattrocchi in the big bad world of Congress-dominant Delhi? How did he know Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi? Why was he a force - fixer perhaps - to be reckoned with even before Bofors arrived on the Indian political landscape?

Man from Milan
The Milan-born Quattrocchi arrived in India as early as 1964, years before Sonia married Rajiv. The chartered accountant initially set up office in Chennai, leaving India for two years between 1966 and 1968. Thereafter he came back for 25 years, not leaving till a friendly government smuggled him out in 1993.

Described by someone who knew him in the 1970s as a "smart-talking salesman", he moved to Delhi as representative of Snamprogretti, a subsidiary company of the Eni Group, an energy conglomerate owned by the Italian Government. With his wife Maria, he came to know fellow expatriate Sonia.

Rajiv was, of course, only an airline pilot then, a private individual and far from politics. "The Quattrocchis were part of Rajiv's and Sonia's inner circle of friends," remembers a senior Congress politician from those years, "and the families did go out on holidays together." In the Emergency years, Snamprogretti won its first big contracts, but the company and its India representative were still not headline news.

The breakthrough moment for Quattrocchi came in 1980, when Indira Gandhi swept back to office. The Thal Vaishet fertiliser facility was being set up by Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (RCF). On the basis of recommendations by a Committee of Secretaries, the outgoing Janata Government had decided to award the contract to an American company.

Then things changed. The new government reversed the decision, awarded the contract to Snamprogetti - which had not been shortlisted as it did to have the ammonia-based technology necessary for the plant -- allowed it to bring in an external consultant and so "rent" the requisite technology, and essentially tore up the entire tender process.

It was murky business. The World Bank, which was funding the Thal Vaishet plant, withdrew from the project citing irregularities. KV Ramananthan, the chemicals and fertilisers secretary who opposed the betrayal of tender norms, was exiled to the Planning Commission. The scandal was raised in Parliament.

It was all to no avail. Indira Gandhi stuck to her guns, Snamprogetti won its first blockbuster victory - and the mysterious Italian who seemed to know the Prime Minister's daughter-in-law gradually became the centre of intrigue, attention and intriguing attention.

In particular, the sidelining of Ramanathan - incidentally, the father-in-law of Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh - took government insiders by surprise. Second in the IAS batch of 1950, he was the front-runner for the cabinet secretary's post but instead retired as member-secretary in Yojana Bhawan.

"Ramanathan's humiliation," says a former civil servant who served in Rajiv Gandhi's PMO, "was a signal to the bureaucracy. Quattrocchi was not a man you messed with."

Seven-year run
From roughly 1980 to 1987 - Indira Gandhi's final years and Rajiv Gandhi's honeymoon years - Quattrocchi had the Midas touch. No deal was refused to him. "It was understood," remembers a Congressman from the original Mrs G's days, "that a fertiliser contract meant Snamprogetti. That was considered the favour to Sonia and Rajiv."

The Ottavio aura grew. The man was in and out of the prime ministerial residence. Bureaucrats and government functionaries opened their doors to him. He was even supposed to be making calls from official phones. "He virtually appointed the fertiliser minister," says a senior official from that era.

Socially, "Mr Q" and his wife were perhaps the most important expatriate couple in Delhi. Their children were born and grew up here and were friends of Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi. It is believed that Robert Vadra's mother knew the Quattrocchi household fairly well, and that is where a future couple first met.

Business, of course, boomed, and Quattrocchi established himself as perhaps Snamprogetti's most valuable employee anywhere in the world.

• In 1981, he won his company contracts for the five Thal Vaishet plants from RCF, four Kribhco plants in Hazira, as well as the ONGC gas pipeline in Hazira.
• In 1983, he was awarded National Fertiliser Limited's (NFL's) plant in Una and two plants in Guna.
• In 1984, the Italian took home contracts for IFFCO's three plants in Aonla.
• In 1987, Snamprogetti bid successfully for NFCL's two plants in Kakinada.

This list is far from exhaustive. It is estimated that in Quattrocchi's years in India, his company won rights to 60 projects. The profits are incalculable.

The first defeat
In 1985, Quattrocchi encountered his first setback. The 1,700 km Hazira-Bijapur-Jagdishpur (HBJ) pipeline had to be built and Snamprogetti was locked in a contest with a consortium led by Spie Capag of France. Spie Capag had "bid a few hundred crores lower", recalls a then minister, and was the frontrunner.

Despite Rajiv's interventions, the logic of lower cost was too much to efface. The Committee of Secretaries, the Petroleum Ministry and the Finance Ministry opted for Spie Capag. Mr Q had been quelled. His claim that his company was more expensive because it had the "better technology" did not pass muster with technical monitors.

Vengeance was swift. Nawal Kishore Sharma lost his job as petroleum minister and was reduced to Congress general secretary. PK Kaul found his term as cabinet secretary ending prematurely and was sent to Washington, DC, as ambassador. The petroleum secretary, AS Gill, never made it to contention for cabinet secretary. The chairman of the Gas Authority of India, HS Cheema, was removed.

The HBJ drama was a precursor to Bofors. For the first time, Rajiv found himself on the other side of the fence vis-à-vis two powerful ministerial colleagues, VP Singh and Arun Nehru. Like in the Bofors affair two years later, his friendship with Quattrocchi was to cost him his credibility.

The epilogue
Twenty years after it began, the Bofors story has gone through so many twists and turns that it has reached a dead-end. Quattrocchi has almost no chance of being brought to justice or being tried for political corruption. In fact, his battle in Argentine courts, to prevent possible extradition, will rest on the argument that there is no public corruption case left at all.

Part of the reason for this is a conspiracy of silence among major parties. Of the original Bofors suspects, Rajiv Gandhi's family is in the Congress and the Bachchans are in the Samajwadi Party; the Hindujas -- charged with handling the slush money -- have friends and influence everywhere, including the BJP; VP Singh, once an anti-Quattrocchi crusader, is now a Congress mercenary in Uttar Pradesh.

There is also a legal hurdle. In February 2004, the Delhi High Court dismissed charges of political corruption against Rajiv Gandhi and SK Bhatnagar, defence secretary during the Bofors deal. In May 2005, the Delhi High Court dismissed the case against the Hindujas saying the papers brought from Switzerland in 1997 were "not original" but only copies.

In neither case, did the CBI appeal. It was obviously under instructions from the UPA Government.

In effect then, the political corruption case is dead. As Quattrocchi's lawyers will argue in Argentina, he cannot be charged with being part of a bribery scandal when the Indian authorities themselves have decided to accept that nobody received the bribes!

Balance Sheet

Sonia Gandhi
Could have done without the Quattrocchi replay. Her government's suspect action hasn't helped.

Manmohan Singh
His party president's problem, more than his. But the ham-handed cover-up is his to answer for.

LK Advani
The BJP is all sound and fury. Yet its "go slow" record on Bofors when in power is also a niggling issue.

VP Singh
The original Bofors sleuth is as silent as a doormat. Has not said a word, as he acts the Congress add-on in UP.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, March 4, 2007