The 'Q' Bogey

An initial that, ever since it surfaced in the diary of an armament firm's chief executive, has kept Indian polity on tenterhooks for ten years now.

It was Martin Ardbo, then chief executive of A B Bofors, who in his diary noted that he was worried about 'Q' and his links with 'RG'.

'Q' was obviously Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, and in context of his friendship with Sonia Gandhi and her family, 'RG' could refer only to then Congress chief and Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi.

The Bofors scandal had, of course, surfaced earlier when, on April 16, 1987, Swedish radio broadcast the news that huge kickbacks had been payed to unnamed Indian politicians by the armaments giant. Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter followed up with a story on April 22, but the then Indian government headed by Rajiv Gandhi contented itself with issuing denials, and waited till February 1989 before initiating any inquiry.

The Opposition, meanwhile, went to town on the case, alleging that the Gandhi government's tardiness owed to the fact that the prime minister himself was the recipient of massive kickbacks, conveyed to him via Quattrocchi.

Since then, the Q name has surfaced with alarming frequency - and on each sighting, has signalled upheavals within the Indian political framework. That first mention in the Ardbo diary, and Q's earlier sighting when his firm, Snam Progetti, secured the HBJ pipeline contract in controversial circumstances, served as the catalyst for the fall of the Rajiv Gandhi government, and the rise of the V P Singh-led Janata Dal to power.

Though Singh's tenure at the top was brief -- and that brevity, again, owed much to the fact that despite promising major revelations in the Bofors scam, Singh could not deliver on his promise -- the Q factor has continued to agitate Indian and, more importantly, Congress politics.

Singh did order the CBI to register a first information report in January 1990, in which as many as 14 persons were named. A request to the Swedish government led to the freezing of six accounts relating to Bofors. However, the probe was a non-starter, and the lack of political will was underlined when then external affairs minister Madhavsinh Solanki, in January 1992, handed over a letter to his counterpart in Sweden, asking that the government go easy on the case. Solanki was caught out, and had to resign -- but the probe ended up on the back burner anyway.

But if investigations were inconsequential insofar as tracing the recipients of the kickbacks was concerned, the Bofors bogey has served a very useful political purpose all along. Thus, every time it appeared that Rajiv's widow, Sonia Gandhi, was assuming a larger than life profile, Congress bigwigs would leak to the friendly media word that the Bofors papers were due, and that Quattrocchi's name was about to be revealed as the middleman involved in accepting kickbacks on behalf of the Gandhi family.

And each such leak would be followed immediately by a fresh outburst of dissidence within the Congress ranks, with disaffected elements making courtesy calls on Sonia Gandhi and then telling the media that the Congress leadership was overdue for a change, and that they had the support of the chatelaine of 10, Janpath.

Interestingly, the very leadership that has raised the 'Q' bogey to ensure that Sonia Gandhi does not become politically active has also been instrumental in ensuring that the controversial businessman escaped the net. Thus, even as demands for Quattrocchi's arrest reached a crescendo, the Congress government under P V Narasimha Rao allowed him to slip out of the country in July 1993.

His departure was politically expedient -- for it allowed the Congress to continue using his name to keep the Gandhi family's ambitions in check, without at the same time risking embarrassing revelations if the businessman had actually been arrested and interrogated.

The connection between Quattrocchi and the Gandhi family were further underlined when, in 1995, the CBI interrogated hawala scamster J K Jain. In the course of questioning, Jain alleged he had met Quattrocchi at Rajiv Gandhi's home, and that the former had at the time acted as middleman between the then prime minister and two foreign firms -- the French Alsthom and the Swedish Senca, both of whom were bidding for mega power projects in India.

Quattrocchi promptly issued a denial from Singapore, averring that he had never met Jain, leave alone had links with him. And since then, his whereabouts have remained a mystery -- though unofficially, government sources indicate that he is in Milan, Italy.

Meanwhile, the Bofors papers finally got to India -- and, to nobody's surprise, named Quattrocchi along with the likes of Bofors agent Win Chadha as among the recipients of the kickbacks on the gun deal.

On the surface, this could be seen as a setback for Sonia Gandhi, whose friends have all along been claiming that Quattrocchi was being targeted for a witch-hunt merely to embarrass the Gandhis. However, the crux of the current issue was raised by CBI Director Joginder Singh, who pointed out recently that as per law, "If AB Bofors gave money to any person who is not a public servant, that is no crime."

Quattrocchi definitely is no public servant -- and hence beyond the bounds of prosecution. Speculation that 'Q' received the money on behalf of Rajiv Gandhi is all very well -- but the trick lies in proving it, and CBI circles are pretty unanimous that it can't be done.