ARGENTINA: Argentina denies India's request to extradite Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi

Record ID: 446607

  • Title: ARGENTINA: Argentina denies India's request to extradite Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi
  • Date: 9th June 2007
  • Summary: (BN03) EL DORADO, ARGENTINA (JUNE 8, 2007) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF INTERIOR OF COURTROOM AS COURT ADJOURNS IN OTTAVIO QUATTROCCHI CASE VARIOUS OF ARGENTINE FEDERAL JUDGE HACHIRO DOI TALKING TO COURT QUATTROCCHI GREETING HIS DEFENCE ATTORNEY INDIA ATTORNEY MIGUEL ALMEYRA TALKING TO COURT QUATTROCCHI HUGGING HIS ATTORNEY INDIA ATTORNEY MIGUEL ALMEYRA AND PROSECUTORS LOOKING ON
  • Embargoed: 24th June 2007 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Argentina
  • Country: Argentina
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA3LEVXBH460ZHT6OJWR3L8HKUN
  • Story Text: Argentina denies India's request to extradite Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi. An Argentine court on Friday (June 8) denied India's request to extradite an Italian businessman suspected of involvement in a highly publicised weapons-kickback scheme from the 1980s.
    Federal Judge Mario Hachiro Doi ruled that Ottavio Quattrocchi should not be extradited to India, but he did not immediately explain the decision. A written ruling is expected in the coming days.
    Quattrocchi expressed his satisfaction with the decision.
    "I am really happy and I was very confident that the judiciary in Argentina would do justice and this is what happened. Because, I feel that I have been persecuted for 20 years and this is something terrible. I am extremely happy," he said.
    Sixty-eight-year-old Quattrocchi was detained in Argentina in February under a 1997 Interpol warrant and India formally requested that Argentina extradite him in March.
    Indian investigators say Quattrocchi took 7 million U.S. dollars in bribes as a middleman in the 1.2 billion U.S. dollar purchase of artillery from Swedish arms maker Bofors AB in 1986 for the Indian army.
    Quattrocchi has denied any wrongdoing in the Bofors matter, and India failed in its efforts to have him extradited from Malaysia five years ago.
    The lawyer representing India, Miguel Almeyra said he will appeal the decision with Argentina's Supreme Court.
    "We thought it would be contrary to the defence's interests and, because of that, the Indian state will appeal the sentence before the Supreme Court," Almeyra said after the ruling in the northern Argentine town of Eldorado in Misiones province.
    Almeyra said Quattrocchi fled prosecution and has been a fugitive of justice -- a charge which Quattrocchi's chief defence lawyer, Alejandro Freeland, has denied.
    Quattrocchi was known as a friend of Sonia Gandhi, the powerful Italian-born chief of India's Congress Party.
    Opposition lawmakers in India accused the Congress Party-led coalition of hiding news of Quattrocchi's detention in February to allow a one-month deadline for seeking his extradition to pass.
    The arms scandal harmed the reputation of Gandhi's late husband, then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, and contributed to his government's electoral defeat in 1989.
    An Indian court exonerated Rajiv Gandhi of wrongdoing in the case in 2004, 13 years after he was assassinated.
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