The Bofors scandal was a major corruption scandal in India in the 1980s and 1990s; initiated by Congress politicians and implicating the prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi and several others who were accused of receiving kickbacks from Bofors AB for winning a bid to supply India's 155 mm field howitzer. The scale of the corruption was far worse than any that India had seen before and directly led to the defeat of Gandhi's ruling Indian National Congress party in the November 1989 general elections. The Swedish company paid 64 crore (US$12.77 million) in kickbacks to top Indian politicians and key defense officials. The case came into light during Vishwanath Pratap Singh's tenure as defence minister, and was revealed through investigative journalism by Chitra Subramaniam of the newspaper The Hindu. Later she moved to The Indian Express when The Hindu stopped publishing stories about the Bofors scandal under immense government pressure.

It all started on March 24, 1986 when a $285 million (about 1,500 crore) contract between the Govt of India and Swedish arms company Bofors was signed for supply of 410 155mm Howitzer field guns. About a year later, on April 16, 1987, Swedish Radio alleged that Bofors paid kickbacks to top Indian politicians and key defence officials to seal the deal.

Chitra Subramaniam is an Indian journalist famous for uncovering the Bofors scandal.

She was born in Sindri, India. She was educated at Lady Sri Ram College (Delhi University) with a Bachelors in English Literature and received her Masters in journalism from Stanford University, California, USA. Prior to this, she did her post-graduate Diploma in Journalism from the reputed Indian Institute of Mass Communication. She received The Hindu award for journalism. She is married with two children and lives in Geneva with her husband Dr. Giancarlo Duella.

Chitra was based in Geneva in 1987 working for The Hindu. Working out of Switzerland and Sweden, she got hold of the 300-plus documents which showed that the Swedish arms manufacturer, Bofors, had paid massive kickbacks to Indians and others for the gun deal. For nearly five years she investigated the scandal and the work involved technical and political analysis of complex documents and an understanding of national and international rules and regulation. She followed the process till 1997 when, based on the documentary evidence provided by Subramaniam, Switzerland after a series of cout procedures, agreed to hand over secret bank documents to the Indian government. In the nineties, this Swiss move was a rarity. In the early phase of the investigation, Subramaniam was with The Hindu newspaper. The investigation led to a massive political uproar and is widely believed to have caused the electoral defeat of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Due to political pressure, The Hindu abruptly ceased publication of her reports. Subramaniam resigned from The Hindu. She got several offers from other Indian newspapers to continue her work. She went to the Indian Express. She has also reported widely on multilateral trade (GATT-WTO) negotiations and disarmament.

Subramanian Swamy (born 15 September 1939 in Chennai, India sometimes spelt Subramaniam Swamy) is an Indian politician, academician and an economist. He is the President of the Janata Party of India. He also presently serves as chairman of the SCMS Board of Governors of the SCMS Group of Educational Institutions in Kerala.

Swamy has previously served as member of the Planning Commission of India and Cabinet Minister of India. He has written extensively on foreign affairs dealing largely with India-China, India-Pakistan and Indo-Israel relation and is also a published author.

In November 1978, Swamy was member of the Group of Eminent persons called to Geneva to prepare a report of the United Nations (UNCTAD) on Economic Co-operation between Developing countries (ECDC).Swamy simplified trade procedures and formulated a new export strategy which became the forerunner of trade reform adopted subsequently. In 1994, Swamy was appointed as Chairman of the Commission on Labour Standards and International Trade by then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao. This was perhaps for the first time that an Opposition Party member was given a Cabinet rank post by the ruling party.

Ottavio Quattrocchi is an Italian businessman who was being sought until early 2009 in India for criminal charges for acting as a conduit for bribes in the Bofors scandal.

Quattrocchi's role in this scandal, and his proximity to Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi through his Italian wife Sonia Gandhi (Antonia Maino), is thought to have contributed to the defeat of the Congress Party in the 1989 elections. Ten years later (1999), the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) named Quattrocchi in a chargesheet as the conduit for the Bofors bribe. The case against him was strengthened in June 2003, when Interpol revealed two bank accounts, 5A5151516M and 5A5151516L, held by Quattrocchi and his wife Maria with the BSI AG bank, London, containing Euros 3 million and $1 million, a "curiously large savings for a salaried executive". In January 2006, these frozen bank accounts were unexpectedly released by India's law ministry, apparently without the consent of the CBI which had asked for them to be frozen.