French journal claims new evidence of kickbacks in Rafale deal
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Publishing the invoices on Sunday, the journal added that Indian agencies decided not to pursue the case despite the existence of proof. The deal involves offshore companies, dubious contracts and false invoices. CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) and Enforcement Directorate have had evidence since October 2018 that Dassault, the French aircraft maker, made the kickbacks to Sushen Gupta, Mediapart claimed in its report.
In its April 2021 report, Mediapart claimed that it was in procession of documents that showed Dassault and its partner Thales paid "middleman" Gupta millions of euros in secret commissions. In June, a French judge was appointed to investigate the suspected "corruption and favouritism" in the Rafale deal.
The April report of Mediapart said that the bulk of the kickbacks were paid before 2013. From 2004 through 2013, Dassault paid 14.6 million euros to the firm Interdev in Singapore. But Interdev was a shell company with no activity and administered by a strawman for the Gupta family.
Another report by the journal claimed that Dassault paid 1 million euros to Gupta for manufacturing 50 large replica models of Rafale jets. But Dassault provided French anti-corruption agency- Agence Française Anticorruption - inspectors no proof that these models were made.
In 2015, the NDA led Union government replaced the previous UPA government's deal- with France to buy 126 Rafale aircraft- with the 8.7 billion dollars government-to-government deal to buy 36 of the same, to be built by Dassault. The UPA deal was to make 108 of the 126 in Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) owned by India. After the new 2015 deal, the Congress-led Opposition claimed that the Modi government's payment to buy the aircraft was three times the UPA's deal bid. Also, their deal included a technology transfer agreement with HAL, Congress had claimed.
