Accusing the Opposition BJP of politicising the Bofors issue once again, the Congress on Tuesday said not even a shred of evidence has been found in the last 23 years.
“Bofors has been the political agenda of our opponents. In 23 years, not a shred of evidence has been produced which can lead to prosecution,” party spokesman Anand Sharma told reporters here.
Sharma also ridiculed BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s statement that the saffron party would set up a commission to look into the functioning of the CBI after it withdrew the Red Corner Notice against Bofors case accused Ottavio Quattrocchi.
“When he was the ASG, he went criss-crossing the world with two other officials to find evidence in the case. Then he was the Union Law Minister when the Delhi High Court dismissed the case,” said Sharma, questioning Jaitley as to why the then NDA government did not go for an appeal against the High Court order.
“Millions of dollars of the country was spent but not even a shred of evidence was found,” said Sharma, who is also the Minister of State for External Affairs.
Referring to the withdrawal of Red Corner notice against Quattrocchi, Sharma said in Malaysia, four appeals were made against the Italian businessman but the government lost all of them.
The Attorney General cited the inability of CBI to seek Quattrocchi’s extradition on two occasions —first in Malaysia in 2003 and then in Argentina in 2007 — and opined that the judgements in both the cases indicated that there was no good ground for his extradition.
“The warrant cannot remain in force forever. Therefore, the warrant of February 1997 would lose its validity, particularly in view CBI’s successive failed attempts to get the accused extradited from Malaysia and recently from Argentina,” Banerji said.
Referring to various opinions “procured by CBI” from the top law officers since 2004 when the UPA government assumed power, the advocate said “The central government did not spare the top law officers of the country from being used as its tool to first facilitate the release of money lying in sealed account at BSIAG Bank at London...”.
The application said the money was defrozen from the London Bank after a Additional Solicitor General B Dutta had gone there on the basis of the legal opinion of his colleague KP Pathak who had given “unsolicited legal opinion in regard to Quattrocchi”.
Agrawal had filed the petition in March 2007 accusing CBI and its Director of consistently misleading the court over the extradition proceedings initiated against Quattrocchi, has questioned the conduct of CBI in handling the case which “shows complete betrayal with the people of the country besides being a criminal contempt of this court.
