CBI blames MEA for Q securing bail

NEW DELHI: The CBI, which is being attacked for allegedly shielding the powerful and well-networked, on Thursday attempted to shift the blame for Italian middleman Ottavio Quattrocchi’s success in securing bail from an Argentine court to the ministry of external affairs and the Indian mission. The agency told the Supreme Court that it was kept out of the loop over developments in Argentina.

The assertion of the CBI is sure to increase the Opposition’s criticism of the government. The former has been alleging that the Manmohan Singh government has been aiding the efforts to bail out the middleman.

In a damning revelation, the CBI said the MEA, instead of complimenting the agency’s efforts to get the courts to act against the middleman, kept harping that there was no extradition treaty between India and Argentina.

It said the ministry of external affairs took four days to prepare a formal request to the Argentine government seeking his extradition. The CBI said it could send out the request only on February 8, the day the letter was made available to it by the MEA.

On preparing the extradition documents, too, the MEA attempted to delay the process. For instance, the MEA took eight days to comply with the CBI’s request for providing it with a copy of the English translation of Argentine extradition law and the documents that had to be sent to the Buenos Aires court. But by then, the middleman’s lawyer had secured bail for his client.

According to the CBI’s version, it was the MEA which had adopted a ‘go-slow approach’. Instead of asking it to find a lawyer to represent its case, the MEA kept telling the agency that there was no extradition treaty.

And on February 16 — 10 days after Quattrocchi’s detention — the MEA told the agency that “India and Argentina do not have an extradition treaty, but India could request extradition under Article 25 of second paragraph of law 24767.” Of course, the CBI also sought to keep under wraps the fact that as late as 1981, the agency was of the view that the 1889 extradition treaty between Argentina and British India was extant.

After Quattrocchi secured bail, the MEA did not inform the CBI. “We did not receive any information whatsoever about Quattrocchi’s bail from the Indian Embassy in Buenos Aires.” The Indian authorities filed the extradition documents on March 1, 2007, 20 days after the CBI made the request to the government here.