Who is Ottavio Quattrocchi

Ottavio Quattrocchi is an Italian businessman being sought by India for criminal charges related to the Bofors scandal.

Quattrocchi, born in Mascali, province of Catania, Sicily, arrived in India in the mid 1960s as the representative of Italian oil and gas firm Eni and its engineering arm Snamprogetti. His family became close to the Gandhi family based on their connection with Rajiv Gandhi's Italian wife Sonia Gandhi, and their children grew up together, making quattrocchi's influence grow.
 "that bureaucrats used to stand up when Quattrocchi visited them"

From roughly 1980 to 1987 - Indira Gandhi's final years and Rajiv Gandhi's honeymoon years - Quattrocchi had the Midas touch. No deal was refused to him. "It was understood," remembers a Congressman from the original Mrs G's days, "that a fertiliser contract meant Snamprogetti. That was considered the favour to Sonia and Rajiv.


In the process, it became known that for contracts with India, Quattrocchi was the man to approach.


When orders did not go through, as in the Hazira-Bijapur-Jagdishpur (HBJ) pipeline, where Spie Capag of France had "bid a few hundred crores lower." Vengeance was swift. Nawal Kishore Sharma lost his job as petroleum minister and was reduced to Congress general secretary. PK Kaulfound his term as cabinet secretary ending prematurely and was sent to Washington, DC, as ambassador. The petroleum secretary, AS Gill, never made it to contention for cabinet secretary. The chairman of the Gas Authority of India, HS Cheema, was removed.
It thus became widely known that to mess with him was to have your job removed, and he got to have his way more often than not.