Kuala Lumpour High Court today dismissed an Indian bid for the extradition of an Italian businessman wanted over the sixteen-year-old Bofors arms sale corruption scandal.

Ottavio Quattrocchi, 64, left the court a free man after judge Augustine Paul confirmed an order made by a lower court, which ruled it could not order his extradition because India had failed to fulfill judicial requirements.

Quattrocchi told AFP outside the court that he would leave next week for Italy via China to visit an ailing family member.

"I had never doubted the Malaysian judiciary. I have done nothing wrong. I have nothing to fear."

Prosecutor Kamarul Hisham said the prosecution would seek to overturn the judgement in the Court of Appeal, with the support of India, but would not ask that Quattrocchi be prevented from leaving the country before the hearing.

"He is free to go wherever he wants to," Hisham said.

Fatal failure

A court observer from India's Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), US Prashad, said: "We will pursue the case. We still want him."

The state had appealed the rejection of the extradition by a lower court, but Judge Paul said Friday he had dismissed the prosecution's extradition application because Quattrocchi had not been charged.

"It is my view that failure to provide a charge is fatal," Paul said.

He said that disclosure of the charge must be made to allow the person affected to prepare his defence as it represented one of the principles of natural justice.

"The offences (cheating and corruption) alleged to have been committed by the respondent in India as stated in the requisition are open to doubt," Paul said.

"A person must be an accused person before he can be extradited."

Quattrocchi's wife, Marie, said she was delighted with the ruling.

"You can imagine how happy I am. I just have no words to express our joy. Justice has been served. I thank God," she said as she clutched a rosary with a cross attached.

"We have been sitting and waiting for the last two years. My youngest daughter is expecting her first child soon. We are going home at last. It will be a memorable Christmas."

The middleman

India has been seeking Quattrocchi's extradition in relation to the 1986 scandal in which Swedish armament company Bofors allegedly paid US$14.2 million in bribes to clinch a weapons contract with India worth a total of US$1.3 billion.

India says Quattrocchi, who has been on bail since his arrest in December 2000, was an intermediary in the deal.

But he says he fell foul of an Indian political vendetta and his only crime was to have been a close friend of former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and his widow, Sonia.

Gandhi was assassinated in 1991, and Sonia now heads the opposition Congress party.

India's CBI has levelled charges against Quattrocchi as well as former Bofors agent Win Chadha, the British-based billionaire Hinduja brothers - Srichand, Gopichand and Prakash - and former chief of Bofors, Martin Ardbo.

Home Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi had formally issued an extradition order against Quattrocchi but a court had to rule on whether to enforce it because the two countries do not have an extradition treaty.

Quattrocchi lived in New Delhi until 1993 as the representative of Italian firm Snamprogretti Spa and then moved to Malaysia. AFP