Rafale exposé: Millions paid to Gupta for deal

Strap: French media house dips into confidential documents from ED

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Dassault rejects allegations

New Delhi: French aerospace major Dassault Aviation on Thursday rejected fresh allegations of corruption in the Rafale fighter jet deal with India, saying no violations were reported in the frame of the contract. PTI

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, April 8

In a startling revelation, a French media house has claimed that an Indian business intermediary was secretly paid millions of euros by Dassault Aviation, maker of Rafale fighter jets, and French defence electronics firm Thales. The French team had succeeded in removing the anti-corruption clauses from the fighter contract.

French media house ‘Mediapart’ published a third and final part of the series on the Rafale deal. It said: “Mediapart has obtained a number of confidential documents from the ED (Indian Enforcement Directorate) case file, which shed new light on the behind-the-scenes events of the Rafale deal”.

“Dassault and its French industrial partner Thales paid Sushen Gupta several million euros in secret commissions to offshore accounts and shell companies, using inflated invoices for software consulting,” said the report. These payments were besides the questionable contract with Dassault for making replica models of Rafale jets, worth 1 million euros.

According to information gained by Mediapart, Gupta obtained confidential documents from the Indian Defence Ministry on the dispute between India and France over the purchase costs of Rafale.

The report said, in August 2015, “Indian negotiators concluded, in a confidential report that the overall purchase price for the Rafale jets, including their weaponry, should be 5.06 billion euros. But in January 2016, Dassault proposed more than double the price: 10.7 billion euros, excluding the missile equipment.”

“For the French camp, Sushen Gupta’s assistance was to prove precious. He obtained confidential documents from the Indian Defence Ministry on the subject of the dispute over the purchase costs. These included the minutes of meetings by the Indian negotiating team.

The report said the Indian Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that there were insufficient grounds for opening an investigation into the matter. But that decision was made without the information gathered in the probe by the ED in another case.

“According to evidence from the ED’s case file, the two French firms paid him several million euros over the 15 years leading up to the signature of the contract (in Sept 2016),” the report said. The money was transferred, in the form of secret commissions, some of which have questionable justifications, into offshore companies. It is very difficult to ascertain where the millions of euros paid out by Dassault and Thales finally ended up, given the multiple offshore shell companies involved, registered in opaque tax havens like Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.

The report said India’s Defence Ministry was required, under the terms of the country’s “defence procurement procedure” to include the clauses in question – “penalty for use of undue influence” and “agents/agency commission” – into the contract. But the French “Team Rafale” wanted them excluded.

Dassault and Thales paid highly for Gupta’s knowhow. They hired him at the beginning of the 2000s, at the very moment when India announced it was looking to buy 126 fighter jets.