NEW DELHI: Swiss authorities Dec 4 handed over a bunch of ‘Swiss Bank documents relating to the Bofors kickbacks to the Indian embassy at Berne, official sources said late Tuesday.

The papers relating to A E services, an accused company in the Bofors case, were submitted to the Indian embassy by the Swiss justice and police department, the sources said.

Dispatch of the documents to India, now with the Geneva police and justice department, marks a major breakthrough in the legal process initiated in January after the VP Singh government came to power.

The spokesman said Pierre Schmid, vice director of the federal department of justice and police, Switzerland informed CBI that he had received the papers relating to A.E. services, an accused company in the Bofors payoffs case.

Official sources said A E services, whose account in the Nordfinanz Bank in Zurich was frozen in February, was allegedly paid 7.3 million U S dollars by Bofors for swinging the Rs 14.5 billion deal for the purchase of howitzer guns in favour of the Swedish gun company.

A special CBI team would carefully scrutinise the A E services papers for clues and take further follow up measures to unravel the Bofors mystery, the sources said.

But, they added, the CBI was yet to know the contents of the bunch of documents.

This will be the first time that India will be receiving Swiss Bank documents on the Howitzer deal which will be treated as evidence in the sensational kickbacks case. Even the Swiss authorities, the sources said, had prima facie concluded that a criminal offence had been committed.

The decision to hand over the vital papers to the Indian authorities was taken after the Zurich

Investigating judge, Dieter Jan, ordered on Thursday last that the A E services documents be transferred to the federal police office in Berne.

‘Switzerland’s highest court, the federal court, had on Noy 12 rejected the appeals on behalf of A E services seeking to stall the transfer of documents to India. The appeal had been filed against an earlier decision of the Zurich cantonal court directing that the numbered account documents be made known.

Article extracted from this publication >> December 14, 1990