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Rajiv Gandhi: The Prime Minister of India Who Took Bribes

by B.M. OZA

 

 

BOFORS: THE AMBASSADOR'S EVIDENCE, by B.M. Oza. Konark, 1997, Rs. 250.

 

In a startling revelation, B.M. Oza, India's Ambassador to Sweden between 1984 and 1988, accused then India's Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, of having taken bribes to sign the Bofors gun deal. We reproduce an exclusive extract from the ambassador's memoirs, a ringside view of the Bofors drama.

 

The time was Easter of 1997. Exactly ten years after Good Friday of 1987. The place was Delhi. I had retired from the Foreign Service and settled in my small apartment in the Indian Foreign Service complex in Delhi. I was about to leave for a game of golf. Then the phone rang. This time it was not from the PMO. It was from the CBI.

I was asked if I could make myself available for a discussion with them in connection with their investigation into the Bofors deal with India. I wondered what had provoked this fresh investigation in a ten-year-old scandal. I was told that they had decided to hold a fresh probe in the light of the documents received by them from the Swiss authorities recently.

I went and saw them. They asked me to recount the entire story of the Bofors deal. I did it. They showed me the files carrying the letters, messages and the telegrams, etc. Sent by me ten years ago from Stockholm. They asked me if I stood by the views and recommendations expressed in them. I said that I did. They recorded my statement - a rather lengthy one - based on those documents. They asked me if I wanted to add anything with the hindsight of ten years.

I said that the latest documents received by India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) from the Swiss authorities confirmed the Quattrocchi link in the deal. On that basis, I said that the Italian connection evolved during the period October 1985 to March 1986 should be thoroughly investigated. Also, I suggested that the meetings between Rajiv Gandhi and Olaf Palme during this period should be re-evaluated and the conduct of the Swedish officials and Bofors functionaries during this period should be subject to fresh scrutiny.

They asked me if, in my view, Rajiv Gandhi received bribes in the Bofors deal. I said that my appreciation of Rajiv Gandhi's role in this business had undergone quite a bit of metamorphosis. Elaborating this point, I said that when Rajiv Gandhi conveyed to Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson on March 14, 1986 his decision to give the howitzer gun contract to Bofors, I thought he was forthright and clean. When he strongly reacted to the Swedish Radio broadcast of April 16, 1987 by calling it mischievous and a conspiracy to destabilise India, I thought he was being impetuous.

I said that when he telephoned Swedish Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson on April 27, 1987 and asked him to terminate the official probe earlier requested by the Government of India, I thought he was being naive to trust that Bofors had told the truth in their report to me on April 25, 1987. I thought he was clumsy when he called off the visit of Bofors officials in early July 1987. I thought he was confused when he refused to take action on any of my recommendations against Bofors. I thought he had something to hide when he refused to support Lars Ringberg's investigation in Sweden.

Now with the revelation of the evidence that Quattrocchi received commissions from Bofors, I said, I had no doubt in my mind that they were actually the bribe money for Rajiv Gandhi paid by Bofors through Quattrocchi. Quattrocchi was merely a conduit for siphoning money. He was not a regular arms dealer. His company Snamprogetti dealt in fertiliser and petrochemicals. He was nobody in India without the backing of Rajiv Gandhi. Even in the early eighties, when Rajiv Gandhi was not in the government, Quattrocchi had free access to senior officials of the finance ministry where I worked as joint secretary at that time.

The questions to be answered now are: Who introduced Quattrocchi to Bofors? Where? When? Why? His was a peculiar kind of contract with Bofors. It was signed in November 1985 and terminated in March 1986. It was a performance-related contract. What job did he do for Bofors in those crucial five months? The answer is clear. He got the deal swung in favour of Bofors and that too in a record time. He could not have done this without Rajiv Gandhi's support. What more evidence do you want?

They asked me if in my view any other politician in India received any bribes in this deal. I said that I did not know. They asked me if, in my view, anybody from the Prime Minister's Office was guilty of receiving bribes. I said that to the best of my knowledge no officials in the PMO received any bribes of pay-offs, but they were all guilty of acting as accomplice to Rajiv Gandhi in the cover-up of his crime. They asked me if, in my view, anybody in our defence ministry or any of our military officers received any bribes from Bofors. I said that I did not know.

The long saga of the still continuing and still unfolding Bofors scandal, has been a chapter of our national shame and trauma. In fact, since Bofors several other and bigger scandals have surfaced involving politicians and bureaucrats. Clearly, the quality of our public life has gone down. The growing nexus between politicians and bureaucrats is as disturbing as it is ugly. Why? What are the reasons? What is the way out? Taking Bofors as a case study one can examine this phenomenon.

In the case of the Bofors scandal, if Rajiv Gandhi was the prime suspect, the PMO was the prime tool. The major irregularity committed by the PMO was violation of the Allocation of Business Rules. These Rules define the scope, content and jurisdiction of work of each individual ministry of the central government. These rules are not just a technical formality. They are intended to draw clear demarcation in the work of the ministers, avoid overlap and ensure proper coordination. The PMO is not supposed to deal directly with substantive matters which fall in the purview of the line ministries. The job of the PMO is to prepare summaries, notes and put up papers received from various ministries for orders of the prime minister.

In fact, there are written orders that nobody should address direct communications to the PMO. Communications should be addressed to the concerned line ministry, which may refer the matter to the PMO for PM's orders, if required. This is to ensure that the PMO is not saddled with too much work and there is not concentration of too much power in the PMO and it does not degenerate into a Super-Secretariat and undermine the work of other ministries.

According to these rules of business, all substantive work concerning Bofors fell in the jurisdiction of the ministry of defence. Even if Rajiv Gandhi was defence minister, all work at the official level had to be handled in the ministry of defence. In regard to communicating with the concerned Indian mission (embassy) abroad, the line ministry or the concerned ministry is required to route its communications through the ministry of external affairs or, in case of urgency, directly address them to the mission while keeping the ministry of external affairs in the picture by endorsing copies of these communications to the concerned territorial division of the ministry of external affairs.

This principle was systematically and consistently violated by the PMO. Everything in this matter, right from my recall from leave was handled by the PMO from the nodal point of Ronen Sen, joint secretary in the PMO. This was wrong. The dealing levels should have been Joint Secretary Daulet Singh in charge of Europe West division, which included Sweden, or Additional Secretary Arjun Asrani, who supervised Europe West division or Foreign Secretary K P S Menon, the head of the foreign office.

It was said that while the PMO sidelined the ministry of external affairs, the ministry of external affairs did not do anything to stand its ground in spite of my pleadings. In fact, the ministry of external affairs abdicated its authority to the PMO. As a foreign service officer who worked under the MEA for more than 33 years, nothing has hurt me more than the steady erosion in the role and the standing of the MEA within the government of India.

It is not only vis-a-vis the PMO. It spreads to the inter-ministerial dealings with other ministries as well, such as finance, commerce, industrial development, etc. They all habitually bypass the MEA and deal directly with their foreign counterparts in violation of rules. It is bad for the MEA, bad for the morale of the Indian Foreign Service officers and bad for the country. This rot should be arrested urgently.

The disadvantage of making the PMO the nodal point in dealing with the Bofors scandal was that it got interpreted as an indirect acknowledgment of the role of Rajiv Gandhi as the prime suspect in the Bofors scandal long before the media and the public and lately the CBI accused him of complicity and kickbacks in business with Bofors.

Second, all the instructions and messages came down to me from the PMO over telephone. In spite of my repeated pleadings, nothing was put down in writing. Most of my telephonic contacts were with Ronen Sen, the joint secretary in the PMO. But there was nothing from him in writing. One can understand the need for conveying instructions telephonically in view of urgency. But it should generally be followed up with a written communication or at least a note recorded on the file.

In course of my recent interaction with the CBI, I asked why Ronen Sen, the then joint secretary in the PMO who was instrumental in sending or rather telephonically conveying all these instructions, was not being summoned for questioning. I was told that the CBI worked on the basis of a availability of written evidence. They did not find his signature on any paper on the file. So how could they call him for questioning? I saw the file. Indeed, there was no record of any message or instruction given to me telephonically by Ronen Sen. The reason was easy to understand. One would be accountable for a written communication or order. But if nothing was put in writing, one could get away with bluff and bluster.

The mafias in Rajiv Gandhi's PMO were not as uncivilised as the likes of R K Dhawan, a stenographer-turned-politician, even a former minister. But the style was basically the same. Bluff and bluster. For example, immediately after the release of the Swedish Audit Board Report in early June 1987, I told Ronen Sen in one of our many telephonic exchanges that we should suspend the contract and sue Bofors for fraud and that I would call the Bofors management and give a dressing down for giving us false and misleading information in their report to me. He advised me not to do any such thing and warned that it may amount to breach of parliamentary privilege as a parliamentary committee was in the making to look into the matter. The parliamentary committee remained in the making for three months after that. I asked Ronen to send his instructions in writing. He never did. I sent my recommendations in writing. I never received any reply to them.

Similarly, I asked him to put down all his queries about my contact with Lars Ringberg in writing. He did not. Lars Eric Thunholm, chairman of the Nobel Group said in a public statement that Bofors paid commissions to its agents: if they were passed on as bribes to anybody in India, Bofors was not responsible. I was asked by the media to react. I reacted by saying that it was a highly irresponsible statement, as Bofors had given an undertaking not to have any middlemen in this contract and they were responsible to ensure that no commissions were paid to middlemen and that there were no bribes in this business.

The next day, Bofors apologised for Thunholm's statement. Ronen Sen rang up to admonish me. He emphatically asked me not to make any statements on Bofors in the future. I asked him to put down his instructions in writing. He did not.

Similarly, several instructions were given to me about calling Bofors representatives for JPC hearings and conditions governing these hearings. All this was done on the telephone. I insisted to have them in writing. It never happened. I repeatedly asked if the PMO was to function as the secretariat or channel of communication with the JPC. I never got any clarification. Yet orders and instructions kept coming from the PMO on behalf of the JPC. This culture of bluff and bluster should be remedied. The PMO should be made as much accountable for its conduct as other ministries and departments of the Government of India are.

The third important irregularity committed by the PMO was to systematically and deliberately bypass the embassy channel and deal directly with the Swedish authorities. This was highly undesirable. It undermined the importance of the traditional channels of diplomacy and lowered the prestige of the embassy in the eyes of the Swedish officials.

The most guilty in the long line of officials was the top man, Rajiv Gandhi himself.

His telephone call to Ingvar Carlsson ostensibly to thank him (for what, one does not know) tied him in knots and caused a lot of confusion and embarrassment to the embassy and to me personally as already indicated in the previous pages. Minister of state Natwar Singh appeared to be in the habit of calling Sten Anderson, the Swedish foreign minister, for only he knew what. Other officials habitually called officials in the Swedish prime minister's office and transacted business on telephone. 'Hi Hans, Hi Chinmay' or 'Hi Ronen' were common greetings in exchange of telephone calls to transact business directly.

One did not mind that the officials were on first name terms. But by passing the embassy channel in dealing with a foreign government was a serious lapse. One can understand that in an emergency one had to resort to the instrument of a quick telephone call. But as a habitual way of transacting business it was not correct. Even when such calls were made in exceptional circumstances, a note recording the gist of conversation should always be prepared and placed on the file. This was never done.

These are the days of summit diplomacy. Heads of state/government consider it important to remain in personal touch with one another on important international or bilateral issues. But such calls should be few and about really important and urgent matters. They should not be just to say thank you for nothing.

Even the JPC has been guilty of bypassing the embassy channels. It could be argued that the JPC was not part of the Indian government machinery and therefore not obliged to use the embassy channels. But the selective use of the embassy channel was not in order. It used the embassy channel - of course, through the PMO -- to call Bofors officials for its hearings in September 1987. But it did not use the embassy, nor did it even inform the embassy when it sent a CBI team to meet with Swedish government officials, viz. the state secretary for foreign trade, director of the Swedish Central Bank and the war material inspector.

After all, they used the Indian government organ for this purpose, viz. the CBI. It had to deal with Swedish government officials and not Swedish parliamentary organs. So what harm was there in informing and associating the Indian embassy in this exercise? The only explanation could be that they had no confidence in the head of the Indian mission in Stockholm, viz the Indian ambassador. The Indian ambassador did not suffer in the process. But the credibility of the JPC suffered.

Finally, corruption in politics and public life has spread to alarming proportions. It should be an urgent task to address how to deal with the monster of corruption. Clearly, parliamentary probe is not an answer as the JPC probe in the Bofors business has demonstrated. A parliamentary probe cannot be a substitute for an investigation by a professional criminal investigating agency.

 

Please see image on the right (second from bottom) - detail from a photo gallery published in Schweizer Illustrated, alongwith a detailed expose, listing the leading corrupt politicians from around the world who had stashed away secret funds in Swiss banks. Rajiv Gandhi is in the company of Idi Amin (Uganda), Imelda Marcos (Philiipines), Somoza (Nicaragua), Duvalier (Haiti), Noriega (Panama), Mobuto (Zaire), Ceausescu (Romania), Haile Selassie (Ethopia), Abu Nidal (Palestine), Numeiri (Sudan), Suharto (Indonesia), Saddam Hussein (Iraq), Bokassa (Central Africa) and Shah Reza Pahlavi (Iran).

[Please note: "Milliarden" in German means 'BILLIONS'.]

A veritable den of global thieves!

 

[Extract, courtesy - Rediff] 

April 21, 2011

 

 

 

 

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