Former CBI director Joginder Singh, a regular contributor to the Organiser, blames the law ministry and law officers for yet again failing to secure the extradition of Ottavio Quattrochi who remains a key accused in the Bofors payoff case. In a detailed article, Singh says that long before Quattrochi was detained in Argentina, he had already been a given a clean chit by the senior-most law officers “from the attorney general to the law secretary, from the CBI’s director of prosecution to the additional solicitor general.” It was this clean chit that Q’s lawyer used in the court to his client’s advantage earlier this month.

“How could Quattrochi’s lawyer get all the confidential opinion of the government law officers unless there is a Trojan horse in our system, which smuggled all papers to him, so that Quattrochi could use them to this advantage?” asks Singh. And adds, “Obviously, he has friends in powerful places who have apparently gone out of the way in providing him the file notings.”

Pointing out that he (Joginder Singh) had personally brought the papers (showing a transfer of 7.34 million dollars from Bofors to Quattrochi’s A E Services) in January 1997 from Switzerland to India, Singh says that the case against Quattrochi is still strong as it is based on bank records. “He can still be extradited, provided the government has a will and deputes outstanding lawyers and not the government lawyers, who may have a single-track objective of not displeasing anybody in the government.”

... contd.