New Delhi: Ottavio Quattrocchi was a household name in India in early 90s. But while he is invariably referred to as an Italian businessman, he was perhaps more Indian than Italian. He lived in India for nearly three decades and his four children, were born in this country.
Quattrocchi was born in 1938, at Mascali, in Italy. In 1964, at the age of 26, he came to India as a junior representative of the Italian conglomerate, the ENI group.
The company initially undertook a number of relatively small assignments for various fertiliser concerns, but 1970s onwards, it acquired a high and controversial profile, thanks to Quattrocchi and his access to the Nehru-Gandhi Family.
His first success was in 1977, when he managed to bag two contracts of the Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilisers Company and Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers.
By the time he became a controversial figure, he had extracted other contracts worth Rs 8000 crore from the goverment.
The stocky lobbyist acquired an aura, which was disproportionate to the clout he actually wielded. But that hardly mattered.
Union ministers and secretaries, not to mention heads of public sector undertakings, were more than willing to dance to his tunes.
Soon, the reversals began. Vishwanath Pratap Singh, the then finance minister, refused to favour the Italian consortium represented by Quattrocchi. But Quattarochi had moved on.
By then, he was also working as representative for various other firms like AE services.
In 1986, AB Bofors appointed him as a negotiator for the sale of 400 odd Bofors Howitzer guns, a deal worth Rs 1,436 crore.
Trouble began when the deal was hit by the kickback scam and Parliamentary Committee investigation found him as being one of the accused.
He escaped from India in 1993 to the United Kingdom. In 1997, CBI finally got the necessary papers from Switzerland, and in 1999, a case was filed against him.
However, before Quattrocchi could be extridated from the UK, he moved to Malaysia. With a red corner Interpol notice still hanging over him, government has failed to bring him to India for the trail.
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