By Jorge San Pedro
IANS
Buenos Aires : Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi will be set free if Argentina's Supreme Court rejects India's appeal against a ruling Saturday by a lower court that did not grant New Delhi's extradition request for his links to the Bofors corruption scandal.
"The Argentine justice has nothing against him. We only acted because a foreign government was looking for him and there was an Interpol warrant against him," a court source that wanted not to be identified told IANS.
Judge Mario Achiro Doi of the federal court of Eldorado in Misiones province, 1,240 km north of here in the border with Paraguay, will make public the reasons why he rejected the extradition request June 13 and the Indian government must go to Argentina's higher court by June 18.
The ruling followed two days of arguments by lawyers from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).
This is the second time India has failed to get Quattrocchi, 68, extradited despite mounting a spirited challenge for four months since he was detained in Argentina Feb 6 this year.
Six years ago, a Malaysian court had rejected a similar request after he was detained in Kuala Lumpur on an Interpol alert. Despite engaging the best legal counsel, the CBI's efforts there proved futile.
On Saturday, Quattrocchi said he was happy with the verdict and confident that the judiciary in Argentina would see him as the victim of harassment and "political persecution".
The Supreme Court has no mandatory deadline to issue the final ruling in the case. In the meantime, the Italian businessman will not be allowed to leave the country and may stay in Eldorado, where he was arrested while on his way to Brazil, or moved to Buenos Aires where he had been living.
Eldorado is a town of 90,000 by the river Paraná. Plantations of oranges and grapefruit make the area's landscape.
CBI maintains that Quattrocchi took $7 million in bribes as a middleman in the $1.2 billion purchase of artillery from Swedish arms maker Bofors AB in 1986 for the Indian Army.
The case against him strengthened in June 2003 when Interpol revealed that two bank accounts held by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria with the BSI AG bank in London contained 3 million euros and $1 million.
Public prosecutor Liliam Delgado argued that the reasons behind the extradition request were not politically motivated.
Quattrocchi's lawyer Alejandro Freeland, on the other hand, portrayed his client as the victim of the Indian government harassment and said the CBI case was "weak". Quattrocchi told the press that he had been "persecuted" for 20 years.
"I don't believe there are any reasons to overturn this ruling," Freeland remarked. He said Quattrocchi was "illegally" arrested because there was not a court order when the Argentine authorities caught him.
Likewise, the lawyer went on, the detention order by the local judge was issued after the arrest.
According to Freeland, the Italian businessman had been already tried in New Delhi twice, in 2004 and 2005, and found not guilty. This constitutes a clear case of "double jeopardy", he said.
In New Delhi, a disappointed CBI did not make any public statement but senior officers told IANS that they would appeal in Argentina's Supreme Court. However, CBI officials did not appear very hopeful.
"The Argentinean lower court has given a 29-page order in Spanish. We need to first translate the order and study it. We have a few days and will soon take a call to appeal in the Supreme Court," a senior official said.
However, CBI sources privately admitted that the likelihood of getting a positive order in the Supreme Court at Buenos Aires was slender as it was not in a position to furnish additional information to bolster its arguments.
The CBI had already submitted a 250-page extradition request to the Argentine government after Quattrocchi's arrest in February.
Another CBI officer said: "What can we say? We were always fighting with our backs to the wall."
India's ambassador to Argentina, Pramathesh Rath, said that in the Argentine system the public prosecutor was obliged to appeal in the Supreme Court unless New Delhi specifically asks him not to do so.
A two-member CBI team led by Director (Prosecution) S.K. Sharma was in Argentina to assist the lawyers in the arguments that were technical in nature.
Political reactions in New Delhi were on expected lines.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson Ravi Shankar Prasad said: "We have the strongest belief that the Congress party, whenever it was in power, has been trying to bail out Quattrocchi."
He maintained the detention of Quattrocchi in Argentina was kept a secret, even to India's Supreme Court.
Congress general secretary Satyavrat Chaturvedi said the party had nothing to do with the Argentine court order.
"This is entirely a legal matter. If anything has to be asked, it should be addressed to CBI. How can the BJP blame the Congress? What were they doing when they were in power? Why could not they get him extradited from Malaysia?" he queried.