Our Italian friends

The following article from the Indian Express speaks for itself:

Why Digvijay concerned about Mr Quattrocchi


A Surya PrakashExpress News ServiceFirst Published : 11 Jan 2011 12:07:00 AM ISTLast Updated : 12 Jan 2011 12:34:22 AM IST

Congress leader Digvijay Singh’s concern for Ottavio Quattrocchi, the Italian businessman who knocked off $7.3 million as commission from Bofors when we bought field guns for our army, is truly touching. Obviously he believes that the concept of Atithi Devo Bhava (guest is god) should extend to all guests, be they crooks, wheeler-dealers or commission agents.

According to him, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) order naming Quattrocchi as a recipient of commissions, is suspect on three counts. First, the timing of the order is ‘highly intriguing’. The tribunal, Singh claims, advanced the date of the order from January 4 to December 31; Second, the tribunal made the order public on January 3, a day before the chief metropolitan magistrate was to take a view on the CBI’s plea to close the criminal case against the Italian. This ‘haste’ raises doubts about ITAT’s motive; third, the tribunal was hearing the plea of Hersh Chadha, son of Win Chadha, who was the agent of Bofors. Yet, it paid so much attention to the commission paid to Quattrocchi.

The conspiracy theory set afloat by this Congress general secretary is worthy of close examination. First of all, even if this were to be true, why is an Indian citizen like Singh troubled by the fact that the ITAT advanced the date of the order regarding tax liability of a foreign agent? Further, does he not know that the ITAT order has come a good 22 years after Bofors deposited the kickbacks in Quattrocchi’s Swiss bank account? Second, why is Singh complaining that the order was made public on January 3? On the other hand, an alert citizen ought to ask why the order was not uploaded on December 31 itself. Those who care for transparency and accountability in Indian institutions should be troubled on this score. Finally, we need to ask why this Congress worthy, who holds an important office in a party which was at the vanguard of India’s freedom movement, is so stressed about the fact that the tribunal made a clinical analysis of the illegal payments made by Bofors to Quattrocchi?

That Singh’s concerns are grossly misplaced becomes obvious when one reads the order of the ITAT. The tribunal notes that despite a ban on agents, Bofors entered into a fresh consultancy agreement with M/s A E Services Limited of UK on November 15, 1985 “at the behest of one Ottavio Quattrocchi”. According to this agreement, if Bofors was awarded the contract before March 31, 1986, it was to pay a fee equivalent to 3 per cent of the total value of the contract pro rata with the receipt of the payments. By a strange coincidence, the Bofors-India contract was signed on March 24, 1986, just a week before the deadline. Bofors deliberately suppressed the fact of this agreement in their letter dated March 10, 1986 to the Ministry of Defence. The ITAT noted that Quattrocchi remained in India from February 28, 1965 to July 29, 1993, except for a brief interval from March 4, 1966, to June 12, 1968. He was a certified chartered accountant by profession, working with M/s Snamprogetti, an Italian MNC. “Neither Snamprogetti, nor Quattrocchi had any experience of guns, gun-systems or any related defence equipment”.

Based on bank documents obtained from Switzerland by Indian authorities, the tribunal concluded that after India paid Bofors SEK 1,682,132,196.80 (`29,615 lakh), equivalent to 20 per cent of the contract value, on May 2, 1986, Bofors remitted a sum of SEK 50,463,966 ($7,343,941.98) on September 3, 1986, to A/c No 18051-53 of M/s A E Services Limited at Nordfinanz Bank, Zurich. This was 3 per cent of the amount of advance paid by Bofors. Thereafter, Quattrocchi transferred funds from one account to another, all of which were operated by him and his wife Maria Quattrocchi. The tribunal also noted that Quattrocchi gave a fake address in India (Colony East, New Delhi) while opening one account.

The ITAT appears to have anticipated that some pro-Quattrocchi politicians like Digvijay Singh would raise questions about the order. Therefore, the ITAT has said that “Indian income tax is leviable on all types of income, including legal and illegal income, whether recipients are Indian or foreign residents”. It has therefore expressed surprise that though Win Chadha was proceeded against, “no action seems to have been taken” against Quattrocchi and other related entities. “In our view, to enforce the rule of law, these steps were desirable to bring all the relevant income tax violations to a logical end by the income tax department. Inaction in this regard may lead to a non-existent undesirable and detrimental notion that India is a soft state and one can meddle with its tax laws with impunity”. Will any citizen who cares for India question such an order?
Fortunately, despite politicians like Digvijay Singh, who try to wreck the system from within, there are individuals and institutions in the country who help us keep the faith with the system. Among them are the two members of the ITAT who passed this order and chief metropolitan magistrate Vinod Yadav who has rubbished the CBI’s plea for closing the case against Quattrocchi and observed that there were malafide intentions in defreezing the bank account of Quattrocchi. The judge has also questioned the CBI’s decision to approach Interpol for removing the red corner notice on Quattrocchi.

Obviously, the ultimate test of loyalty within the Congress is to genuflect before the Italian friends of the expatriate who is the party boss. To them, every Italian atithi is devo bhava! It is citizens like Digvijay Singh who turned India into a slave nation for over a millennium. He has given us a glimpse of the depths to which sycophants would sink if Sonia Gandhi became PM. This was exactly the concern of those who raised the foreigner issue a dozen years ago. Singh has now proved that those concerns remain valid to this day.

suryamedia@gmail.com


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