New Rafale Twist: Papers Show Agencies Didn't Act On Alleged Kickbacks
NDTV
A day ago, French portal Mediapart reported that Dassault paid almost 13 million euros to a middleman to help secure the sale of Rafale fighter jets to India, but Indian agencies failed to probe these allegations
As a fresh political controversy erupts over the Rafale deal, NDTV has found more evidence that Indian agencies ignored allegations that French company Dassault, the maker of the Rafale jets, may have paid crores of rupees to middlemen spanning both the BJP-led NDA 1.0 government and the Congress-led UPA.
A day ago, French portal Mediapart reported that Dassault paid almost 13 million euros (nearly Rs 110 crores at current rates) to a middleman, Sushen Gupta, between 2002-12 to help secure the sale of Rafale fighter jets to India, but Indian agencies failed to investigate these allegations despite having access to incriminating documents on at least some of these payments.
Now 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.
The documents form part of the CBI's charge-sheet on alleged corruption in the sale of 12 AgustaWestland helicopters for top leaders in India. They include a statement by Dheeraj Aggarwal, then manager of IT services company IDS, who in 2019 told the CBI that Dassault routed money to Sushen Gupta's Mauritius-based shell firm Interstellar through IDS.
