New proof of kickbacks in the Rafale purchase has been published in the French journal Mediapart

On Sunday, Mediapart, a French online publication, revealed alleged false invoices alleging that French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation paid at least €7.5 million in kickbacks to a middleman to help it obtain the 59,000 crore Rafale fighter jet contract with India.

Despite the existence of records, Indian agencies decided not to pursue the issue, according to the report.

“It involves shady contracts, offshore corporations, and ‘fake’ invoices.”

Since October 2018, detectives from India’s federal police force, the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI), and colleagues from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which combats money laundering, have had proof that Dassault paid at least €7.5 million in secret commissions to middleman Sushen Gupta, according to a report by Mediapart.

Mediapart reported five months ago that a French judge had been assigned to lead an investigation into allegations of “corruption and favoritism” in the agreement.

The online publication claimed to have documentation showing Dassault and its industrial partner Thales, a defense electronics manufacturer, paid “middleman” Gupta several million euros in “hidden commissions” in connection with the deal in an April 2021 report.

The majority of the payments were made before 2013, according to the April report. “An entity named simply ‘D,’ which is a code he often used to represent Dassault, paid €14.6 million to Interdev in Singapore throughout the period 2004-2013,” according to an accounts spreadsheet belonging to Sushen Gupta.

Interdev, it claimed, was a shell corporation with no real business operations, run by a Gupta family stooge.

According to the investigation, Thales paid €2.4 million to another shell firm, according to another financial spreadsheet belonging to Gupta, which only covers the years 2004 to 2008.

In an April investigation, Mediapart alleged that Dassault paid Gupta €1 million for building 50 huge replica Rafale jets, despite the planemaker providing inspectors from the French anti-corruption agency Agence Française Anticorruption with no proof that the replicas were built.

India started in April 2015 that it would execute an $8.7 billion government-to-government deal with France to buy 36 Dassault Rafale jets. The agreement was signed a little over a year later. The previous Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) administration had decided to buy 126 Rafale fighter jets, 108 of which were to be built in India by state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL).

The deal became a point of contention. The Congress-led opposition alleged that the price at which India is buying Rafale aircraft is currently 1,670 crores per plane, three times the company’s initial bid of 526 crores when the UPA was trying to buy the plane.

It further stated that a technology transfer agreement with HAL was part of the prior contract.
None of the documents cited by Mediapart have been reviewed by HT.

The UPA pact made in 2012 was not a viable one, according to then-Defense Minister Manohar Parrikar, who implied that it would never be closed and that any comparison is thus irrelevant. The UPA was unable to complete the contract until 2014, owing to disagreements over the cost of products that were not included in the initial proposal.

The government has stated that it is unable to divulge the price due to a confidentiality agreement with France as well as a strategic rationale of not exposing India’s hand to its adversaries.