Docs Show Agencies Were Told of Possible 'Rafale Kickbacks', Didn't Act: Report

"Such allegations could have led to a blacklist of Dassault under Indian laws," the NDTV report said.

A day after French online investigative journal Mediapart made public some alleged false invoices and claimed that Dassault Aviation paid €7.5 million in kickbacks to a middleman to ensure the success of the Rs 59,000 crore deal with the Indian government for 36 Rafale fighter jets; NDTV has reported that they have found “more evidence” that Indian agencies ignored such allegations.

NDTV’s report, dated Tuesday, 9 November, alleges:

“NDTV has found more documents that show that in 2019, three years after India signed the Rafale deal, central agencies, including the CBI, were alerted to possible kickbacks paid by Dassault, yet they failed to act on the allegations. Such allegations could have led to a blacklist of Dassault under Indian laws.”

MORE DETAILS

As per the report, the documents have been incorporated in CBI’s charge-sheet on alleged corruption in the sale of the 12 AgustaWestland helicopters and include a statement by Dheeraj Aggarwal, then manager of IT services company IDS. Aggarwal had reportedly told the CBI that Dassault had sent money to Sushen Gupta's shell firm through IDS.

IDS is alleged to have helped route ₹ 4.15 crore of Dassault's money to Interstellar (Gupta’s shell-firm) between 2003 and 2006; the payment period spanning the NDA government under Atal Bhihar Vajpayee and the UPA which came to power thereafter.

Further, as per the NDTV, the CBI did not initiate a probe against this company despite knowing this at least since 2019 — when the said testimony was recorded.

WHAT DOES THE MEDIAPART REPORT REVEAL?

Mediapart claimed that the French aircraft company – Dassault Aviation – paid €7.5 million in kickbacks (an illegal payment made to somebody who sets up a meeting or transaction) to a middleman named Sushen Gupta to ensure the success of the Rs 59,000 crore deal with the Indian government for 36 Rafale fighter jets.

The investigative report also says that "detectives from India's federal police force, the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI), and colleagues from the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which fights money laundering, have had proof [of this] since October 2018."

Along with other damning revelations, Mediapart alleges that Sushen Gupta received secret commissions from AgustaWestland, an Anglo-Indian helicopter, via an offshore company registered in Mauritius called Interstellar Technologies Ltd.

The Mauritian government, however, agreed to send certain "documents relating to this company, including contracts, invoices and bank statements" to the CBI and the ED, and that is how both investigative agencies discovered that "Sushen Gupta had also acted as an intermediary for Dassault Aviation over the Rafale deal."

But the story doesn't end there. The report alleges that "during the final negotiations of the Rafale contract, Sushen Gupta got hold of confidential documents from India's Ministry of Defence detailing the stance of the Indian negotiators, in particular how they calculated the price of the aircrafts."

Both Dassault Aviation and Sushen Gupta have refused to comment on the leaks, despite being contacted by Mediapart.

(With inputs from NDTV and Mediapart.)