STOCKHOLM: A Swedish daily Wednesday alleged Ajitabh Bachchan brother of matinee idol and former parliamentarian Amitabh Bachchan, was behind a sixth bank account frozen by a Swiss court last week in connection with the controversial bofors gun deal.
The daily, “Dagens Nyheter,” however said that India’s top sleuthing agency, the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) had not officially confirmed that one of the blocked accounts belonged to Ajitabh Bachchan.
But CBI director, Rajendra Shekhar, confirmed that they had found one account they had not known about earlier, the paper said.
The Swiss Justice Department literally stumbled onto this sixth account, the paper said quoting unnamed sources, which it said, were well informed about the gun scandal.
(Earlier a Geneva court had frozen the Swiss Bank accounts of Svenska incorporated, A E Services, “Mont Blac” “Lotus” and “Tulip”, following a request by the CBI director, in the wake of the registration of a first information report in a Delhi court).
(Amitabh Bachchan, in a letter to Prime Minister Vishwanath Pratap Singh Wednesday said if the government believed that he was guilty of any illegality with regard to the Bofors gun deal, then action should be taken against him.
(“You have the resources of the government of India at your disposal and there is nobody in a position of authority to protect me, as proclaimed by you, over the last three years. You can, I am sure, dig up all the proof you need and I will be happy to defend myself in a court of law,” Bachchan said.)
The Bofors scandal rocked the government of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi as the then opposition and media alleged a whopping Rs 640 million was paid as bribes to top officials and politicians to clinch the 13 billion dollar deal for the purchase of Howitzer guns from A B Bofors of Sweden.
Amitabh Bachchan is a very close friend of the former prime minister.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 9, 1990
