NEW DELHI: A day after making the disclosure about the detention of Ottavio Quattrocchi, an accused in the Bofors payoffs case, by Interpol in Argentina, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Saturday said it had sent documents relating to his extradition to the External Affairs Ministry. The Ministry will forward the extradition request to the Argentinian Government.

The agency is racing against time for sending the formal request for the Italian businessman's extradition within the deadline of 30 days since he was detained on February 6.

"Argentinian authorities have requested that all relevant papers and documents should be in Spanish; we had to get all documents translated, which took time," CBI Director Vijay Shanker said.

He brushed aside suggestions that there was a delay in announcing the detention of Mr. Quattrocchi, saying verification to establish his identity needed to be done before disclosing the detention.

The Interpol Red Corner Notice against the Italian national, issued on the request of the CBI, had been pending since 1997. A team of CBI officials would also leave for Argentina as and when required.

Mr. Quattrocchi, who is the only accused in the alleged Rs. 64-crore Bofors payoffs case, left India in 1993 and has remained elusive ever since from the clutches of law. For some years, he remained in Malaysia where he set up his business and India's request for his extradition was turned down, first by the Sessions Court, Kuala Lumpur, on December 2, 2002 and the order of discharging him of the extradition proceedings was upheld by the Court of Appeal on April 30, 2003 as also by the Federal Court of Malaysia on March 31, 2004.

Former CBI officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say that though Malaysia had rejected India's extradition request on "technical grounds," the fact remains that Mr. Quattrocchi happens to be a foreign national and it is very difficult to get a fugitive extradited to a third country.

In the recent past the CBI has been successful in extraditing mafia don Babloo Srivastava from Singapore, underworld don Abu Salem and his accomplice Monica Bedi from Lisbon, Portugal, and Aftab Ansari, wanted in a case of blast outside the American Centre in Kolkata. "But all these were Indian nationals and Mr. Quattrocchi is an Italian national and it is natural for any government to inform the Italian Government about the detention of its national and ask it whether it wanted him back," sources pointed out.

The case of Abu Salem and Monica Bedi's extradition from Lisbon in November 2005 was an exceptional example of "unparalleled" cooperation between the two Governments and relentless perusal of the extradition case through diplomatic channels after understanding each other's legal requirements.

Pointing out that extradition, a lengthy judicial process, had to pass through several stages, the sources said that as Mr. Quattrocchi faced the diluted charge on the count of "conspiracy to cheat," the designated court in Buenos Aires would have to determine whether it amounted to an extraditable offence.

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