No evidence of Rajiv Gandhi taking bribe: Bofors whistleblower

New Delhi, April 25: The whistleblower in the Bofors case has made his identity known after 25 long years. In an exclusive interview, former Swedish Police chief Sten Lindstrom has owned up being the 'Swedish Deep Throat' in the illegal payoffs case that once rocked both India and Sweden. Now a quarter of a century later, investigations lie buried, despite coming tantalizingly close to blowing the lid off the sensational scandal.

Lindstrom says in an interview to the journalist who had broken the story, Chitra Subramanian, that there was no evidence to suggest that former PM Rajiv Gandhi had taken bribe in the Bofors deal. However, he did not seem to have done much to prevent the cover up that followed in both India and Sweden to protect the main accused, Ottavio Quattrocchi, against whom, says Lindstrom, there was conclusive evidence.

Lindstrom has revealed that he was the person who leaked over 350 documents to the Indian journalist. He was the journalist's secret informant who operated under the pseudonym of Swedish Deep Throat.

"Many Indian institutions were tarred, innocent people were punished while the guilty got away," says Lindstrom. "The evidence against Ottavio Quattrocchi was conclusive. Through a front company called AE Services, bribes paid by Bofors landed in Quattrocchi's account which he subsequently cleaned out because India said there was no evidence linking him to the Bofors deal. Nobody in Sweden or Switzerland was allowed to interrogate him."

In the interview, appearing in a website The Hoot, Lindstrom says, "Ardbo (Bofors managing director) had also mentioned a meeting between an AE Services official and a Gandhi trustee lawyer in Geneva. This was a political payment. These payments are made when the deal has to be inked and all the numbers are on the table."

Lindstrom's 'disclosures' are known in India, examined even by courts and brushed aside, and the timing of the disclosure that he was the 'Deep Throat' for the exposes on Bofors scam is certain to trigger some speculation about his motive.

Quattrocchi was discharged in 2009 by the court which observed that the CBI, which withdrew prosecution against him, had failed to "put forward legally sustainable evidence with regard to conspiracy in the matter''.

In fact, Lindstrom goes on to suggest that the Gandhi family may have gone out of his way to protect Quattrocchi. "He (Ardbo) had written in his notes that the identity of N (Arun Nehru) becoming public was a minor concern but at no cost could the identity of Q (Quattrocchi) be revealed because of his closeness to R (Rajiv Gandhi)."

Lindstrom gives a clean chit to Amitabh Bachchan and his family saying that the story against them was planted in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter by Indian investigators. "They gave me a list of names to pursue including the name of Amitabh Bachchan... During that trip to Sweden, the Indian investigators planted the Bachchan angle on DN,'' he says.