Bofors scandal

The Bofors scandal was a major weapons-contract political scandal that occurred between India and Sweden during the 1980s and 1990s, initiated by Indian National Congress politicians and implicating the Indian prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, and several other members of the Indian and Swedish governments, who were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB, an arms manufacturer principally financed by the Wallenberg family's Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken,^[1] for winning a bid to supply to India their 155 mm field howitzer.^[2] The scandal relates to illegal kickbacks paid in a US $1.4 billion deal between the Swedish arms manufacturer Bofors with the government of India for the sale of 410 field howitzers, and a supply contract almost twice that amount. It was the biggest arms deal ever in Sweden, and money marked for development projects was diverted to secure this contract at any cost. The investigations revealed flouting of rules and bypassing of institutions.^[3]

On 16 April 1987, a Swedish radio station broke out a story based on a whistleblower in the Swedish police, alleging that the reputed Swedish artillery manufacturer Bofors had paid kickbacks to people in several countries, including Sweden and India, to secure a ₹15 billion (equivalent to ₹200 billion or US$2.6 billion in 2023) contract. This had been done the previous year for a deal to supply 410 155 mm calibre howitzers for the Indian army.^[4] However, none of the newspapers in India were aware of this. In May 1987, a broadcast by a Swedish radio station revealed that bribes of ₹600 million (equivalent to ₹8.2 billion or US$100 million in 2023) had been paid by Bofors to Indian politicians, members of the Congress party and bureaucrats. This was picked up by a young journalist from The Hindu, Chitra Subramaniam, who happened to be in Sweden at that time, covering another story. The scale of the corruption was far worse than any that Sweden and India had seen before^{[dubious – discuss]} and directly led to the defeat of Gandhi's ruling Indian National Congress party in the November 1989 general elections.^[5] The Swedish company paid ₹640 million (US$8.0 million) in kickbacks to top Indian politicians and key defence officials.^[6]

The case came to light during Vishwanath Pratap Singh's tenure as defence minister, and was revealed through investigative journalism tipped off by a Reuters news revelation on Swedish radio, followed up by a team led by N. Ram of the newspaper The Hindu.^[7] Subramaniam, reporting for The Hindu, secured the over 350 documents that detailed the payoffs. Later the articles were published in The Indian Express and The Statesman when The Hindu stopped publishing stories about the Bofors scandal under immense government pressure and Subramaniam moved to the two newspapers. In an interview with her, published in The Hoot in April 2012 on the 25th anniversary of the revelations,^[8] Sten Lindström, former chief of Swedish police, discussed why he had leaked the documents to her and the role of whistle-blowers in a democracy.^[2]