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Monday, Apr 12, 2004

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LINDSTROM'S TRUTH

TO STEN LINDSTROM, the upstanding Swedish policeman, must go the credit for keeping the investigation of l'affaire Bofors alive and kicking against extraordinary odds for 17 years. Absent his professional independence and unyielding sense of moral outrage, the search for the truth behind the $50 million secret payoffs in the howitzer deal concluded by the Rajiv Gandhi regime in 1986 would have died at the starting gate. The line of investigation Mr. Lindstrom pursued, the mass of incriminating documents he seized in 1987, and his investigative intelligence and stamina ensured that `Bofors' would enter the popular vocabulary of Indian languages — as a synonym for skulduggery and corruption. The story he basically figured out in 1987, repeatedly told the news media between 1988 and 1998, and has returned to, in a spirited way, on the eve of India's 14th general election continues to be explosive, and haunting in every sense for the Congress party.

Analytically, the wrongdoing can be understood in terms of three modes of action: the motivated decision-making on a Rs.1437 crore defence contract (1986); the arrangements for payoffs — calculated, in all cases, on a percentage basis — into secret Swiss bank accounts (1987); and the debacle of cover-up and crisis management (chiefly during 1987-89). Some of the key actors in the story are dead. The surviving recipients are three Hinduja brothers and Ottavio Quattrocchi, the high-profile Snam Progetti representative who pulled off many a business coup during his halcyon days in India and enjoyed a close personal relationship with Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, including apparently the freedom of their household. Realising that a strong story is best kept simple, Mr. Lindstrom concentrates on what Mr. Quattrocchi's proven presence, deep inside a Matryoshka dolls' nest, as the recipient of a $7.12 million Bofors payoff means for the reputations of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. Elbowing his way into the howitzer deal at the last minute, with a 3 per cent `entitlement' nesting in a shell company, A.E. Services, the Italian businessman had the temerity to enter into a top-secret agreement that nothing was due to him unless Bofors was awarded the howitzer contract by April 1, 1986. Mr. Lindstrom's editorialising is on the ball: "It was clear to me that this was the political payoff. Police officers know that the person who comes in last and walks off with a sum of money for no apparent work is a political payment made to people who have the power to close the deal." The investigator also has the knife into the famous "Gandhi Truste[e] lawyer" (mentioned in Martin Ardbo's secret diary and revealed, in an unexpected way, to the Central Bureau of Investigation) and the former Prime Minister. With an insider's knowledge, the Swedish investigator recalls the pressure exerted by the Rajiv Gandhi dispensation on the Swedish government and Bofors — to "blank out" the incriminating portions of the National Audit Bureau's report, and not to disclose "any names."

All this is perfectly legitimate, whatever one thinks of the timing of Mr. Lindstrom's rather dramatic foray into public journalism. Almost all the "key questions" he asks demand answers. Indeed the CBI should try to bring Mr. Lindstrom into the case, even at this late stage, as a star prosecution witness. One wishes, however, he had resisted the temptation to put some spin on his story by demanding that "Sonia Gandhi must be questioned," presumably in connection with the "political payoff" to Mr. Quattrocchi. The Congress president does not figure in any way in the Bofors documents or case — even if her husband decidedly does. Since guilt by association cannot be accepted in any investigation worth the name, Mr. Lindstrom's truth is somewhat compromised in this respect. However, as a party the Congress has shown itself incapable of digging itself out of the dismal hole into which it was thrown by independent India's pre-eminent corruption scandal. By depicting l'affaire Bofors as an evil conspiracy against a squeaky clean Rajiv Gandhi, by adopting Mr. Quattrocchi's cause more or less as its own (claiming there is no real evidence against him, thus compounding a Congress Government's calculated decision to let him escape the CBI's net by fleeing India in July 1993), by making light of Mr. Lindstrom's deadly indictment, the party has shown it has learnt nothing and forgotten nothing from its 1980s debacle.

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