Rafale back in political crosshairs as French judge probes graft claim
Mediapart, the French investigative website, filed a report on Saturday that said a judicial probe into suspected corruption was opened on June 14 over the 7.8 billion euro Rafale contract in 2016.
FollowThe Rafale found itself back in a political storm in India on Saturday after the French media reported that the National Financial Prosecutor's Office of France had appointed a judge to investigate 'corruption' and 'favouritism' suspicions in the 2016 multi-billion dollar deal with India for the purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft.
Mediapart, the French investigative website, filed a report on Saturday that said a judicial probe into suspected corruption was opened on June 14 over the 7.8 billion euro Rafale contract in 2016.
According to media reports, a French judge has been tasked with investigating 'corruption' suspicions in the deal. The new probe is an outcome of a series of reports done by Mediapart on the deal.
One of the reports said that Sherpa, an NGO that works to give victims of financial crimes support, filed a complaint in April with France's National Financial Prosecutor PNF requesting the opening of a judicial investigation or corruption, favouritism and various financial offences likely to have occurred in the deal which entailed the sale of 36 combat aircraft manufactured by Dassault Aviation.
Dassault Aviation, the manufactures of the Rafale aircraft, has denied all corruption allegations.
Mediapart also claimed that the Agence Française Anticorruption had found suspicious payments made to a company linked to a middleman who was arrested by India's Enforcement Directorate in 2019 in connection with the VVIP chopper scam.
The agency was set up in 2017 tasked with checking where large companies implemented the anti-corruption procedures set under the French anti-corruption law, Sapin 2, and is similar to India's Comptroller and Auditor General, but unlike the Indian counterpart, the AFA also audits private firms. Sherpa has said that its first complaint was filed with PNF in October 2018 to bring attention to "facts which, in our opinion, should have justified the opening of an investigation."
The organisation said it was based on a complaint filed by former Indian Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie and lawyer Prashant Bhushan with the Central Bureau of Investigation.
In another report earlier this year, Mediapart claimed that the former head of PNF, Éliane Houlette, had shut an investigation into alleged evidence of corruption in the jet deal against the objections of colleagues. It is reported that she justified her decision as preserving "the interests of France, the working of institutions."
Mediapart has reported that her successor at the PNF, Jean-François Bohnert, allowed the opening of the probe.
Mediapart's latest report said that the criminal investigation opened on June 14 and led by an independent magistrate, an investigating judge, will, among other elements, examine questions surrounding the action of former French President Francois Hollande, who was in office when the Rafale deal was inked, and current French President Emmanuel Macron, who was at that time Hollande's economy and finance minister, as well as the then defence minister, now foreign affairs minister, Jean Yves Le Drian.
The deal, worth Rs 59,000 crores, has faced criticism and controversy in India, with the opposition Congress claiming that the Modi government had purchased the jets at inflated costs and questioning why the contract was allotted to a private firm instead of the public Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. They claimed that the price at which the country was buying the Rafale was Rs 1670 crores for each, which was thrice the initial bid of Rs 526 crores by the company when the UPA, led by the Congress, was attempting to
purchase the aircraft.
The NDA, led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has not disclosed the price and has said that it cannot due to a confidentiality agreement with France and, second, to not give the country's enemies a tactical advantage. It also said that the deal included customised weaponry. In February 2019, the Comptroller and Auditor General, in a report, said that it had audited the deal and said that India had not overpaid for the jets.
In 2019, India's Supreme Court dismissed a number of review petitions which sought a probe into the procurement of the 36 jets and said there was no ground to order an FIR into the case.
