London, July 01, 2005
Ashok Gupta
NRI Hinduja brothers UK- based billionaire were cleared
yesterday by an Indian appeals court of accepting
kickbacks in an arms scandal. Srichand Hinduja and
his brothers, Gopichand and Prakash, were accused
of receiving payments totalling $8.3m in illegal commissions
to help to secure an Indian government contract for
AB Bofors, a Swedish gunmaker.
It took 15 years of legal process and cost Rs. 2.5
billion. The New Delhi high court also dismissed charges
against the Swedish arms manufacturer of paying bribes
on the $1.3bn sale of 400 howitzers to India in 1986.
The judge quash the framing of charges by the chief
metropolitan magistrate against the Hinduja brothers
and the Bofors AB." The bench criticised India's
top criminal investigation agency for failing to produce
any credible evidence to substantiate its original
claims. The judge said evidence from the federal prosecuting
agency, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI)
is "useless and dubious material" since
its authenticity could not be verified.
Ram Jethmalani lawyer of Hinduja brothers said that
his clients had made the mistake of not being totally
open to begin with. The Hinduja brothers had long
maintained that the money paid into Swiss bank accounts
was part of a consultancy deal, not a kickback. "It
was their mistake, it made them look as if they were
trying to obstruct the investigation both here and
abroad. But one should still ask why the case continued
for so long," Mr Jethmalani said.
