GENEVA: As the deadline in Sweden for prosecuting Bofors officials who paid bribes to Indians for the field Howitzer gun deal elapses it is time to begin investigations into this case in Sweden. It also means that those within the company who have the deal on their conscience can be expected to surface
The final pieces in the Jigsaw names of beneficiaries-can come from banks in Geneva. Hearings are scheduled for April 3 and Swiss Federal Authorities have advised the court to admit the Indian request for assistance. And the desperation with which beneficiaries or beneficial owners of these accounts are trying to scuttle the case is ample evidence that information contained in the accounts is damning enough. Their latest efforts included soliciting the help of Indians Foreign Minister Madhavsinh Solanki who used his access to slip a mischievous memo into the investigations and almost succeeded in halting it. Utmost, efforts at a cover-up continue and they continue to fail. Solanki claims rather remarkably that he does not remember the name of the Indian advocate who handed him the five page memo but elements are already available to suggest the identity of these person elements that undoubtedly will jog the minister’s memory.
Whatever any employees of Bofors former or current say after the deadline has passed according to Swedish law bribe givers have to be prosecuted within five years of the crime can only corroborate what is already known. That some Indians have creamed off some $250 million from the $1.3 billion gun deal. Over 300 documents have established that Bofors paid this money violation of an undertaking to the contrary to take the contract home.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 10, 1992
