Last week,Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Vinod Yadav suggested that properties owned by Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi could have been attached as a coercive and deterrent measure. Precisely the same advice was given to the CBI six years ago by Stephen Hellman,the lawyer for the Crown Prosecution Service,following the agencys success of freezing his accounts in London. However,in what has been a familiar pattern for the two-decade-old case,the CBI was confronted with an opinion from a government law officer arguing vehemently against the move. Internal file notings and opinions of the CBI in the case,available with The Indian Express,reveal that at that stage,Hellman had suggested a two-pronged strategy to nail Ottavio Quattrocchi. One,that the agency should ensure that the restrained order be in place pending the resolution of the proceedings against Quattrocchi in India. This did not happen since a government team visited London to inform them that nothing was pending against Quattrocchi in India and he moved his money from the accounts within hours. Second,Hellman suggested that the CBI obtain an order of attachment or forfeiture in India that can be registered as an external confiscation order and then enforced in England or alternatively to obtain a confiscation order in England which could be enforced there. Senior CBI officers then wrote on the file that Hellman himself had clarified that while making of an order of attachment or forfeiture under Section 105-C of CRPC would be difficult since Quattrocchi was residing in Italy,the alternative recourse of invoking Sections 82 and 83 of CrPC should be resorted to instead. Additional Solicitor General B Duttas opinion on the subject was received by the CBI on December 9,2004 and evidently,stymied by this,the agency did not proceed further on attachment or forfeiture of Quattrocchis properties. In an internal note,senior officers noted that the ASG has opined that recourse under section 82 and 83 CrPC is not permissible in the facts of the present case as an order under Section 82 CrPC is possible only where there exists a town or village in India in which such person ordinarily resides where the court can issue a proclamation and a house. in India . to which the proclamation can be affixed. The CBI,it now transpires,believed otherwise.
