Quattrocchi, Singh

New Delhi, June 15: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has less than a week to decide whether India should appeal in the Argentine supreme court for the extradition of Ottavio Quattrocchi. Government sources have told The Telegraph the deadline for filing an appeal is June 21.

The high court judge in El Dorado, Mario Hachiro Doi, gave the reasons for his rejection of Delhi’s extradition plea on Wednesday, June 13, by Indian time.

Argentine law allows a party five working days to file an appeal in the supreme court. Because of a spate of holidays in Argentina in the coming week, the deadline expires on June 21.

“The papers, all of them translated into English, are now with the government in Delhi,’’ a source said. “Delhi has now to decide what to do.’’

The Argentine special prosecutor has automatically gone into appeal against the high court judge. But if India fails to give the go-ahead or directly appeal in the supreme court by June 21, the appeal would fall through, suggesting New Delhi is not interested in getting the Italian businessman extradited.

Quattrocchi is alleged to be one of the recipients of kickbacks paid by Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors which was contracted in the ’80s to sell Howitzer guns to India. But the CBI has failed to get a conviction against him in Indian courts.

The sources would not argue about the case’s merits. “The government has to make a political call — whether it wants to extradite Quattrocchi or not.’’

If New Delhi decides to appeal, it must quickly get its act together. That is, the CBI must furnish the documents it had failed to put together for the high court case last week. Legal experts said this was easy enough to do.

These documents include the arrest warrant by the Delhi trial judge in 1991, as well as the details of why the CBI last February asked a Delhi magistrate to issue an arrest warrant against Quattrocchi after he had already been arrested in Argentina.

It has been learnt that the government paid its lawyer in Argentina, Miguel Angel Almeyra, $50,000 (Rs 20.5 lakh) for fighting the extradition case.

The translated minutes of the arguments by Almeyra and Quattrocchi’s lawyer Alejandro Freeland, though, suggest that Almeyra was no match for his opponent.

First, Freeland cited that Quattrocchi lived in Delhi until 1993, but over six long years he was never once questioned in the Bofors controversy, which came up in 1987.

Second, Quattrocchi went to live in Malaysia from 1993 to 1997, after which he returned home to Milan, Italy. But New Delhi did not once ask the Italian government to hand him over after it lost the extradition case in Malaysia.

Third, Freeland said that according to Indian law, the commissions from Bofors could not be paid to any Indian national — but the law did not say that such commissions could not be paid to foreigners.

Freeland also argued that the Swedish government had never once verified to New Delhi whether the Martin Ardbo papers, crucial to the case, were the genuine article. Ardbo was chief of Bofors and an accused in the case.