Krishnaswamy Sundarji - The Bofors Scandal

The Bofors Scandal

In 1986, the Rajiv Gandhi Government struck a $1.3 billion defence deal with A B Bofors of Sweden. Sundarji had recommended this gun, which he felt was as good as the French Sofma, which had been favoured earlier. When news emerged of a 3% payoff in the deal, with possible links going up to the highest levels of government, Sundarji tried to have the deal cancelled.

In 1996, Swiss bank documents were released to the Indian government, revealing that the bribe money had been channelled through several front companies to Ottavio Quattrocchi, an Italian businessman and close personal friend of Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi. The Central Bureau of Investigation asked General Sundarji to testify before the agency on his role in the deal. This is what he had said in an interview at that point. :

• Question (George Iype): Didn't you tell the Rajiv Gandhi government to scrap the deal when the scandal broke out?

• Gen. Sundarji: Soon after the corruption charges began pouring in the foreign and Indian media, I immediately rushed to the office of the then Defence Minister Arun Singh and told him: "Let us scrap the deal."... I insisted that the government should terminate the deal with the Swedish firm as by then only six Bofors gun had arrived in India.

• Q: What did Singh tell you?

• S: He told me to write my request on a piece of paper and submit it to the Defence Secretary, S. K. Bhatnagar, so that he can take up the matter with the Prime Minister's Office. I did that and waited for days to get an answer from Singh. But one day Bhatnagar came to my office and told me to redraft the note and change my stand.

• Q: What did you do then?

• S: I told Bhatnagar that I could not agree to the suggestion. I then called on Arun Singh and asked why the government was insisting that the deal should go through. He told me that the PMO feels that the cancellation of the Bofors contract would jeopardise India's security. By 1987 April, only six Bofors guns had arrived in India. I tried to convince Singh that the Bofors gun would not affect the country's security and defence preparedness.

• Q: Did Arun Singh agree with you?

• S: It seemed to me that Singh agreed with my views. But he told me that "the order from above and obedience from below theory" is the order of the government. Singh soon left the Rajiv Gandhi government in disgust.

The Bofors scandal and the (slight) shadow it cast on his reputation of integrity left Sundarji scarred with a severe distaste for politics.