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Prosecutors investigating the 15-year-old Bofors corruption scandal say a clutch of documents they have received for the first time from the Swedish government would give their case a shot in the arm.
The Central Bureau of Investigation said the papers would tighten its case against the high-profile accused including the Europe-based billionaire industrialists, the Hindujas.
The documents received last month reportedly provide evidence of illegal pay-offs arising out of Swedish arms manufacturer A B Bofors' Rs. 14billion deal, signed in March 1986, to sell 410 155mm howitzer guns to the Indian Army.
The CBI has alleged Rs 640 million were paid as bribes and commissions to illegal agents. Among others, the scandal implicated then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi leading to his Congress party's defeat in the 1989 general election.
"We will shortly present the documents to the trial court. We are confident the documents would establish the payoffs into the accounts of the accused," a top CBI official told IANS in New Delhi Tuesday.
The documents, which include records of slush funds in Swiss banks and other hideaways, have been temporarily returned to Stockholm for translation and should be back next week, the official said.
The CBI has charged the Hindujas and former Bofors agent Win Chaddha with receiving illegal commissions. It has accused others, including controversial Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi who is a friend of the Gandhi family, of receiving bribes in return for influencing the deal.
The documents are the first-ever the CBI has received from the Swedish government. Stockholm was earlier sceptical of the Indian agency's criminal case and refused to share key documents, the CBI official said.
In 1991 Stockholm declined a CBI request for the documents as no Swedish national was accused in the case. That view changed in 1999 when former Bofors president Martin Ardbo, at large in Sweden, was made an accused.
The CBI tried its luck with Stockholm again in 1997, after the Swiss government responded positively to its requests for details of slush accounts of Chaddha, Quattrocchi and the Hinduja brothers, Srichand, Gopichand and Prakashchand.
This second request is believed to have done the trick with the Swedes. Earlier in April, a CBI team visited Stockholm and met officials in the justice and foreign departments, who agreed to transfer the documents.
"It was a shot in the dark," another CBI official told IANS.
Indo-Asian News Service
Complete coverage of the Bofors scandal
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