By IANS,
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Friday decided to hear in October a plea for starting contempt to court proceeding against Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly concealing from it the information about Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi’s arrest in Argentina in Feb 2007.
A bench of Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and Justice P. Sathasivam slated the contempt plea for hearing in October along with the final hearing of another lawsuit seeking direction to the union government to ensure Quattrocchi’s presence before a Delhi court to face trial for allegedly receiving illegal kickbacks worth Rs.7 billion in the Bofors gun purchase scandal in mid-1980s.
As the two petitions, filed by advocate Ajay Agrawal, came up for hearing, the bench slated them for final hearing in October.
In a petition filed in March 2007, Agrawal had sought the launch of contempt to court proceedings against the CBI alleging that it deliberately withheld from the court Feb 7, 2007 the information about Quattrocchi’s arrest in Argentina Feb 6, 2007.
Agrawal had said in his petition that the CBI concealed the vital information from the court Feb 7, 2007 despite knowing fully well that Quattrocchi was arrested in Argentina a day earlier.
He had moved the apex court earlier in January 2006 for a direction to the union government to ensure Quattrocchi’s presence before a Delhi court to face trial for his alleged role in the Bofors pay-off scam.
He had moved the court in the wake of reports that newly sworn-in Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government has given its no-objection certificate to the British authorities to defreeze two accounts of Quattrocchi in a London bank.
India had got the accounts frozen in June 2003 during the tenure of Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance government after the Interpol had traced the suspected Bofors payoff fund to be deposited in those two accounts, belonging to Quattrocchi and his wife Maria, respectively.
Agrawal had also sought the apex court’s direction to prevent the government from issuing any no-objection certificate to the London bank to defreeze those accounts.
On Agrawal’s plea, the apex court had Jan 16, 2006 ordered the government to ensure that the accounts were not defreezed. It had also asked the government to ensure that no money is withdrawn from the accounts, if they had been already defrozen.
But despite the apex court’s order, Quattrocchi’s accounts with London’s BSI AG Bank were defrozen and he was able to withdraw funds to the tune of Euro 3 million and $1 million from the bank.
During a subsequent hearing on Agrawal’s plea Feb 7, 2007, the apex court even asked the CBI and the union government to retrieve the amount withdrawn from the defrozen bank account.
In his petition seeking the launch of contempt to court proceedings against the CBI, Agrawal had pointed out that barely a day earlier Feb 6, 2007, Quattrocchi was arrested by the Argentinean authorities at the Iguazu International Airport on the basis of a Red Corner notice issued by the Interpol.
Quoting from an affidavit filed by the CBI in response to his petition for freezing of Quattrocchi’s London bank account, Agrawal also pointed out to the court that the CBI knew of Quattrocchi arrest in Argentina by Feb 7, 2007.
He said the CBI, however, concealed this vital information from the court during the crucial hearing of his petition Feb 7 and leaked the information to the media about Quattrocchi’s arrest in Argentina days after Feb 23, 2007 when he was already granted bail by a lower court of Argentina.
Agrawal contended that the CBI’s act of deliberately concealing the vital information from the court on a crucial day amounted to interference in administration of justice by the court and tantamount to contempt to court.
On March 16, 2007, Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam had pleaded to the apex court to dismiss the contempt to court plea raised by Agrawal. But the apex court had refused to dismiss it saying that it would decide later if the CBI committed any contempt to court in the matter.