Ottavio Quattrocchi

Who was Ottavio Quattrocchi?

Ottavio Quattrocchi was an Italian businessman who was being sought until early 2009 in India for criminal charges for acting as a conduit for bribes in the Bofors scandal. Quattrocchi's role in this scandal, and his proximity to Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi through his Italian wife Sonia Gandhi, is thought to have contributed to the defeat of the Congress Party in the 1989 elections. In 1999, the Central Bureau of Investigation named Quattrocchi in a chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribe. The case against him was strengthened in June 2003, when Interpol revealed two bank accounts, 5A5151516M and 5A5151516L, held by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria with the BSI AG bank, London, containing Euros 3 million and $1 million, a "curiously large savings for a salaried executive". In January 2006, these frozen bank accounts were unexpectedly released by India's law ministry, apparently without the consent of the CBI which had asked for them to be frozen.

On 6 February 2007, Ottavio Quattrocchi was detained in Argentina on the basis of the Interpol warrant. The Indian investigating agency CBI came under attack for putting up a half-hearted effort towards his extradition and India lost the case for his extradition in June 2007, the judge remarking that "India did not even present proper legal documents". Consequently, India was asked to pay Ottavio's legal expenses.