|HT|
Mediapart, a French online journal, on Sunday published alleged fake invoices that it claimed enabled French aircraft maker Dassault Aviation to pay at least €7.5 million in kickbacks to a middleman to help it secure the ₹59,000 crore deal with India for 36 Rafale fighter jets. It added that despite the existence of documents, Indian agencies decided not to pursue the case.
“It involves offshore companies, dubious contracts and ‘false’ invoices. Mediapart can reveal 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 since October 2018 that Dassault paid at least €7.5 million in secret commissions to middleman Sushen Gupta,” Mediapart said in a report.
Five months ago, Mediapart reported that a French judge was appointed to head a probe into suspected “corruption and favouritism” in the deal. In a report in April 2021, the online journal claimed that it was in possession of documents that showed Dassault and its industrial partner Thales, a defence electronics firm, paid “middleman” Gupta several million euros in “secret commissions” in connection with the deal.
(Except for the headline and the pictorial description, this story has not been edited by THE DEN staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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