The Q who I knew

Ottavio Quattrocchi was affability personified, almost bending over backwards to be polite. But one soon realised there was another side to his personality. He could be patronising while enlightening the uninitiated about his links with India’s powerful people, writes Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

The media invariably refers to him as a ‘businessman’. But other descriptions would better suit the second most well-known Italian in India. The charitable would call him a ‘facilitator’ while others could throw an epithet like ‘fixer’ at him. He came to India as a young man in February 1964, stayed on for almost three decades, and left New Delhi in July 1993 for Kuala Lumpur, never to return again.

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At one level, Ottavio Quattrocchi was affability personified, almost bending over backwards to be polite. But one soon realised there was another side to his personality. He could be patronising while enlightening the uninitiated about his links with India’s powerful people. I must have spent close to two hours with him on two occasions, the last time in early-1993 at his well-appointed office in the capital’s Jor Bagh. I confess I had come close to a mole in his team who informed me that he had left his ‘second home’ for good. I got to break the story for the newspaper that then employed me.

The stocky lobbyist wielded clout in the corridors of power. He knew it. There was no dearth of Union ministers and secretaries to the government of India who were more than willing to genuflect before him. When he first arrived in India, he was a relatively junior representative of Snamprogetti, which was part of an Italian public sector energy and engineering conglomerate called the ENI group. When he left India, he had been promoted as regional director for South Asia.

Although the Italian company had executed various contracts for Indian fertiliser manufacturers from the early-1970s onwards, it acquired a controversial profile after Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980 and reversed a decision of the previous Janata government by awarding a contract for the Thal-Vaishet fertiliser complex to the Italian firm and its Danish associate Haldor Topsoe.

However, the controversy hardly deterred Q. On the contrary, he grew even more ambitious. Snamprogetti became part of a consortium which bid for the Hazira-Bijaipur-Jagdishpur (HBJ) gas pipeline contract, by which time the Italian company had received contracts for projects worth at least Rs 8,000 crore in India. V.P. Singh is on record as saying that his relations with Rajiv Gandhi started souring when, as finance minister, the then prime minister’s office sent him a list of points to consider while assessing the bids for the HBJ pipeline that were identical to the representation made by Snamprogetti.

After it was revealed that the former Bofors executive Martin Ardbo’s diary contained a reference to a certain Q, I received a tip-off that he and his family had stayed at one Hotel Moresco during a holiday in Sardinia. Moresco was the name of one of the companies in which slush funds were allegedly kept by Bofors. I got an Italian-speaking acquaintance to call up the hotel, but its owner was away. I sought a meeting with Q. He agreed on condition that he would not be quoted. After I met him, the editor of the fortnightly magazine I used to work for received a call from Q about this pesky journo. The story wasn’t used.

On the second occasion I met him, he protested vehemently: “I have nothing to do with Bofors.” I asked him if he was planning to leave India. “Can’t you see me? I’m not going anywhere as I have nothing to fear. If I have done anything wrong, let them come and arrest me.” Before leaving his office, Q insisted I take with me a glossy book on Roman art. I wanted him to first speak to me on record. He refused. I refused his book. I was disappointed I didn’t have a story.

The rest, as the old saying goes, is history.