JULY 15- By the time he escaped from India in 1993 – as a reluctant government dragged its heels on attempting to detain him – Ottavio Quattrocchi had spent nearly three decades in the country. It was home to him, no less so because all four of his children were born in the country. As he was scurried away from the country that he had taken for his own, though, it became clear that the feeling was not mutual.
The Italian businessman – who died in Milan following a heart attack at the age of 74 – had arrived in India at the age of 26 as a junior representative of oil and gas firm Eni, as well as its engineering arm, Snamprogetti. Over the years, leveraging his Italian connection and getting introduced through a fellow businessman, Quattrocchi built a relationship with then Indian Airlines pilot Rajiv Gandhi and his wife, Sonia. This was no perfunctory friendship.
As a Special Judge noted in 2002, “Italian food and other gifts” were often exchanged between the two families and the Quattrocchi and Gandhi children started to spend a lot of time with each other.
By the late 70s and early 80s, the Quattrocchi connection became common knowledge in New Delhi. Bureaucrats and politicians knew whose ear Quattrocchi could whisper into if he was denied something, giving him what reputed journalist Ashok Malik called ‘the Midas Touch’. No deal would be refused to him. He would end up bagging more than 60 projects for Snamprogetti, including some of the biggest fertiliser plants of the time.
One quiet day, in far off Sweden, a radio broadcast would end up changing Quattrocchi’s life. It was 1987, three years after the Indian Army had floated a tender for Howitzer guns kicking off all the shady politicking that came with defence contracts. Despite objections and proof that there were better suited gunmakers, the order would end up going to Swedish company Bofors. Swedish Radio, however, dropped a bombshell claiming that Bofors had paid bribe for the contract.
Further digging by The Hindu’s Chitra Subramaniam-Duella and N. Ram would reveal that the deal came through because, according to the diary of Bofors’ MD Martin Ardbo, ‘Q’ was very close to ‘R’.
It eventually turned out that Quattrocchi, ‘Q’, was Bofors’ chief negotiator in the country, through a web of corporate connections that attempted to hide the relationship. The scandal was enough to ensure a Congress defeat in the 1989 elections, but the investigation did not gather steam until 1993 – when the CBI finally sought permission to impound Quattrocchi’s passport.
