From: cybck@cyber.reading.ac.uk (Chandrasekhar Kambhampati)
Subject: Indian Courts clash over inquiry into illegal kickbacks from arms deal
Organization: University of Reading
Date: Tue, 8 Sep 92 00:44:59 GMT


From	  : Chandrasekhar Kambhampati
Source    : The Gaurdian's New Delhi Correspondent Derek Brown.
Date	  : Mon, 7 Sep 92 14:45:51 BST
Country	  : India

* Indian Courts clash over inquiry into illegal kickbacks from
  arms deal. The judiaciary's big guns are blazing away in defence of
  investigators into BOFORS scandal

                            * * * * * 

India's longest running and most complex corruption scandal has now
enmeshed the highest courts in an unsavoury wrangle over alleged
cover-ups.
In the latest flurry of legal activity, the supreme court has over-ruled
Delhi High Court judgements apparently seeking to halt further
investigation into multi-million pound kickbacks on India's biggest ever
arms import deal.
The saga goes back to 1986 when , after months of detailed evaluation,
the government opted to supply the army with high technology
155-millimetre howitzers made by the Swedish Manufacturer, Bofors.
The deal was worth 14 billion rupees, or about 775 million pounds at the
1986 exchange rate.
By spring of the following year, rumours circulated that illegal
commissions totalling 32 million pounds had been paid through a network
of intermediary companies and individuals. One of the men named by the
investigators and the Indian press as centrally involved was Win Chadha,
a long established wheeler dealer with bases in the middle-east and
contacts in Europe and North America.
The Indian press has striven to prove that some of the Bofors rake-off
made its way to then congress party government headed by the late Rajiv
Gandhi.
No such link has been firmly established, and successive attempts by
India's Central Bureauof Investigation (CBI) have become mired in the
web of secret channelsthrough which money allegedly changed hands.
However, more than two years agothe CBI drew up a report outlining the
results of its inquiriesto date, and naming Mr Chadha, a Bofors
executive, Martin Ardbo, and members of the wealthy Hinduja family of
industrialists and traders based in London.
On basis of this report, it applied formally to the swiss authorities
for information about the beneficiaries of various numbered bank
accounts.
The Swiss Cantonal court in Geneva was ready to pronounce in that
application last Friday. But in the meantime the Delhi High Court twice
intervened.
The first time, Mr Justice Maharaj Krishan Chawla, argued that both the
CBI report and the request to Switzerland had been superseded by the
report of a joint committee of both houses of parliament, exonerating
the government of wrong doing.
That prouncement towards the end of August, was shot down by the Supreme
Court, which sharply criticised JUdge Chawla.
Then on Wedenesday last week, the Delhi High Court again intervened,
this time on the application of Mr Chadha's counsel. Once again, the
CBI's initial report and its request to Switzerland were quashed, this
time by Chief Justice Gokal Chand Mittal and Justice Sat Pal, who said
that no offence was disclosed in the report.
Yet again, the Supreme Court moved swiftly to counteract the lower
court's findings. On Friday, the Supreme Court ruled that the Delhi High
Court judgment could not be used in any Swiss Court to allow the release
of any frozen bank account, or the release of any other information.
 
In other words, the legal convultions in Delhi should not be allowed to
interfere with the tortuous search for the truth in Switzerland. The
relieved CBI - which has come under heavy pressure to slow or even call
off the investigation - immediately passed the Supreme Court ruling to
Geneva, where the Cantonal court is expected to deliver its verdict
within days.


<........ other details about the congress party etc ommitted......>


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