Cheque and Mate

The Quattorocchi drama, currently being played out among India’s politicians and the media, is like an elaborate game of chess. F.O.S (Friend Of Sonia) Ottavio has already cashed his cheque and he has an unshakable mate in Mrs.Gandhi. The outcome should be obvious to all but the impossibly idealistic and naïve.

A little background may be provided here for non-Indian readers. Back in the 1980’s, when Rajiv Gandhi was India’s Prime Minister, the Indian army placed a massive order for 155 mm field howitzers on arms manufacturer Bofors AB of Sweden. It was widely believed that Bofors had paid massive kickbacks to procure the contract. The name of the middleman associated with the scandal was Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman who represented the petrochemicals firm, Snamprogetti. Quattrocchi was close to the family of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and his wife Sonia (who is currently President of India’s ruling Congress Party); and emerged as a powerful broker in the '80s between big business and the Indian government. The charges against Quattorocchi are still pending.

If the information about Quattorocchi’s detention had not been leaked, it is a safe bet that the CBI would have experienced convenient amnesia and the extradition deadline would have been allowed to pass without a murmur. The boss lady does not want her dear friend to be harassed – and that would have been that. The so-called independence of India’s investigative agencies is a myth that has been busted long ago.

Once the news did become public, Mrs.Gandhi and her sycophantic coterie went into emergency damage control. And they were not the only ones. Quattorocchi’s son flew into Delhi to remind "Sonia Aunty" to stand firm. He need not have bothered. Mrs.Gandhi’s "loyal soldiers" may be expeditiously expendable, but she stands by her friends. There is no way Ottavio is going to be brought back to India to stand trial – not on her watch.

And so the game continues. Quattorocchi is already out on bail – a little nugget the CBI had been aware of for over a week, but did not think it important enough to share with the rest of the country. They also demonstrated that they have developed procrastination into an art form. First the Indian mission in Argentina was to get details of the extradition procedure in that country. One would have thought that a nation which has pretensions about being a major player on the world stage would have such routine information on file – but no matter. Then when a copy of the Argentine Extradition Act finally did arrive, the CBI discovered (Surprise! Surprise!) that it was in Spanish. So naturally it took five days to get it translated into English – Spanish is such a rare and exotic language, you see.

The result of this world-class filibustering is that twenty of the thirty days that the Argentine authorities are empowered to detain Quattorocchi in their country have already lapsed. The CBI is now making haste slowly to file the extradition request before the deadline expires. No bookie, worth his salt, is going to give you any odds on that actually happening.

The opposition parties – not surprisingly – have been participating in this charade with unbridled gusto. They know full well that there is no way Mrs.Gandhi is going to offer up her good friend as a sacrificial lamb – and no one in the Congress has the gumption to overrule her. What they are really after is some significant political victory that will boost their popularity among the masses. I am pretty sure a quid pro quo is already in the works. The opposition will ease off on Quattorocchi, in exchange for….. Only the blank remains to be filled in. In other words, it’s business as usual in the world’s largest democracy.