Bofors scandal

The Bofors scandal was a major corruption scandal and employed the Indian and to a lesser extent, the Swedish domestic politics in the 1980s.

In the tenure of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, son of former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, planned the Indian Ministry of Defence in 1986 the purchase of 410 155- mm howitzers of type Haubits FH77 / A of the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors AB worth a total of 1.4 billion U.S. dollar. With a radio show in Sweden, the scandal came on April 16, 1987 rolling. Reports the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter Bofors According to this 40 million dollars as a " kickback commissions " ( bribes ) paid about Swiss bank accounts of Indian personalities to surpass his French competitors.

Impact and aftermath

The scandal surpassed all previous Indian corruption scandals by far and led directly to the 1989 electoral defeat of the ruling Indian Congress Party, in which the family Nehru / Gandhi for Indian independence dominated the affairs of the country. After Rajiv Gandhi had resigned from the government, his personal protection was reduced. On 21 May 1991 he was assassinated. 1993 submitted by the Swiss authorities the results of their investigations in Swiss banks to the Indian government. On 5 February 2004, the Delhi High Court Rajiv Gandhi postmortem spoke of any involvement in the scandal -free.

The scandal is connected with the name of the Italian representatives of the engineering and construction group Snamprogetti from Milan, Ottavio Quattrocchi, who was friends with the family Gandhi. Rajiv Gandhi's widow Sonia is Italian-born. On July 29, 1993 Quattrocchi left India to settle in Malaysia. The court in Delhi wanted to question him regarding the Bofors scandal. Therefore, it put India on the wanted list of Interpol and requested his extradition from Malaysia. Quattrocchi was accused of having used its proximity to government officials, including Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi to have threaded an arms deal with anti-aircraft guns in favor of Bofors.

On 31 May 2005 the Supreme Court of India dropped all previously raised allegations against the originating from India Shrichand brothers, Gopichand and Prakash Hinduja with a British passport. The British High Court ordered the release of the accounts of Quattrocchi in two British banks because of lack of evidence for a connection of these accounts with the Bofors kickbacks. The accounts worth three million euros and one million U.S. dollars had been frozen by order of the High Court since 2003. The Supreme Court asked the Indian Government of India on 16 January 2006 to ensure that Quattrocchi can not deduct from the two British accounts the money. But the competent authority in India for corruption and economic crime investigations Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI ) had to acknowledge on 23 January that already 210 million rupees had been lifted.