As France started a probe into the Rafale deal, Indian opposition reignited the debate on alleged corruption and money laundering. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who came to power on the slogan of vikass and transparency, and who was considered a clean leader, now faces a tough challenge due to mega corruption charges in the Rafale deal. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi put a picture of Modi’s beard with Rafale protruding out of it on his Instagram handle and mocked ‘Chor ki Darhi’ (the culprit’s beard)?
The Wire magazine of India has reported that opposition political parties and critics, who had raised various questions about alleged impropriety in the Indian Rs 60,000 crore (9.3 billion dollars) defence deal earlier, have begun to target the Union government again. Over the last two months, the French website Mediapart (pronounced may-thee-aa-paar) has exposed a number of possible financial crimes in the Rafale deal, following which a fresh judicial investigation was ordered in France. Among the first to respond was Prashant Bhushan, the eminent lawyer who had also moved the Supreme Court of India to demand a probe into the purchase of the aircraft. However, the apex court, then under Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, had dismissed a clutch of such petitions, rejecting the contention that there were grounds to file an FIR in the matter.
Obviously; ex Chief Justice Gogoi, who was labelled as an RSS Chief Justice, did not want to expose the Modi regime’s corruption scandal—no wonder he was given a seat in Rajya Sabha just after retirement. Prashant Bhushan who has suffered at the hands of RSS thugs for following the corruption case against Modi government, states, ‘the Mediapart story further corroborates the whole string of evidence which we had placed before the Supreme Court seeking an independent investigation into the deal. Unfortunately, the bench led by CJI Gogoi preferred to blindly accept what the government told them in a sealed cover note which was later found to contain much false information, including about a non-existent CAG report’. He further elaborated that “the French media followed up the story, which has now led to an independent probe regarding corruption, bribery, money laundering and influence peddling involved in the deal and puts the spotlight on Anil Ambani again”.
As reported by the Wire magazine, the French Public Prosecution Services’ (PNF) decision to seek a formal probe represents a u-turn from the stand it took in 2019. At that time, its head, Eliane Houlette, going against the advice of one of her staff and without carrying out any investigations, dismissed an initial complaint filed by Sherpa. The reason she cited to justify her decision was, “to preserve the interests of France”.
The four charges being probed by French judiciary have strong circumstantial evidence. France 24 Channel and the Wire magazine, in their report published recently, quoted Mediapart sources, these are being discussed in the succeeding paras of this article:
Corruption and bribery: Mediapart claimed that “millions of euros of hidden commissions” were given to a go-between who helped Dassault conclude the sale, of which “some... could have been given as bribes” to Indian officials.
Influence peddling and cronyism: France’s Sherpa NGO, which specialises in financial crime, has filed an official complaint for “corruption” and “influence peddling” among other accusations, prompting an investigating magistrate to be designated to probe the deal. Sherpa had already asked for an investigation into the deal in 2018, but the PNF took no action. In this first complaint, the NGO had denounced the fact that Dassault chose Reliance Group as its Indian partner, a conglomerate headed by billionaire Anil Ambani, who is close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Dassault had initially won a contract in 2012 to supply 126 jets to India and had been negotiating with Indian aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). By March 2015, those talks had almost reached a conclusion, according to Dassault.
Given the central role played by Anil Ambani’s Reliance group—Dassault’s Indian partner in the deal for the 36 aircraft—the probe is likely to also examine the nature of the association between the two companies.
India and Dassault had officially been negotiating terms for the purchase and manufacture of 126 Rafale jets right up to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s publicly announced decision—on April 10, 2015—to scrap that deal and replace it with the outright purchase of 36 fighters. While Manohar Parrikar, India’s defence minister at the time, was unaware of Modi’s decision until the very end, it now appears Anil Ambani may have had an inkling of it.
In a sensational new revelation, Mediapart reported that the first MoU between Dassault and Anil Ambani’s company was actually signed on March 26, 2015: “Documents seen by Mediapart show that Dassault and Reliance had in fact signed their first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)—a document setting out broad outlines of an agreement—on March 26th 2015. That was 15 days before Modi’s announcement of the turnaround, and the exclusion of HAL, and begs the question as to whether the two companies had been informed of it in advance.” Though Dassault was still in talks with Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd for execution of the original contract for 126 Rafales, the new MoU was silent about any association or involvement with HAL.
But in April of that year, after Modi paid an official visit to France, the talks suddenly broke down to general surprise. Reliance Group, which has no experience in aeronautics, replaced HAL and finalised a new contract for 36 jets.
In addition, in January 2016, at the time of the negotiations, Reliance had financed a film co-produced by Julie Gayet, the partner of Francois Hollande, who was president at the time. Sherpa believes this could constitute “influence peddling”. France’s Le Monde newspaper also revealed that France in 2015 cancelled a 143.7-million-euro tax adjustment targeting a French firm belonging to Reliance, at the time when the deal was being negotiated.
Money laundering: How did the money doled out to middlemen (wicholias in Indian parlance) land in the account of the corrupt leaders and defence officials? This is a million-dollar question. A fair probe would not only expose the Modi government and his cronies but also put a question mark on French authorities, denting the reputation of President Macron and the current Foreign Minister, Mr Jean-Yves Le Drian as well as Dassault Aviation.
The French media feels that a criminal investigation will examine questions surrounding the actions of former French president François Hollande, who was in office when the Rafale deal was signed, and the current French president Emmanuel Macron, who was Hollande’s economy and finance minister at the time, as well as the then defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, now Macron’s minister for foreign affairs.
Modi’s assertion, after PAF’s Operation Swift Retort, that the ‘presence of Rafale could have turned the tables against Pakistan’ has become a joke in Indian defence circles. This statement also proved that the IAF without Rafales was unfit for war in 2019; actually the Indian politico-military leadership sheepishly tried to deflect the poor performance of their pilots due to lack of appropriate technology.
The bigger question arising out of the shoddy Rafale deal is the issue of international money laundering. France and India are two major members of FATF who have been very active in blackmailing developing countries through political use of the FATF forum; should FATF look into the aspect of money laundering by India and France, when the forum is primarily meant to check the menace of international money laundering? This is a million-dollar question and a moot point which should be pursued by Pakistan in international forums.
Has the Rafale aircraft become a curse for Modi and the IAF? We feel that Rafale will always haunt the IAF pilots, when they fly this high tech piece along the Indo-Pak borders or the LAC with China. The corruption and money laundering tags attached with Rafale aircraft will make it very difficult for the future ‘AbhiNonDones’ to face the PAF in any future battle.
Adeela Naureen and Umar Waqar
The authors are freelance journalists. They can be reached at adeelanaureen
@gmail.com.
