Modi govt obstructs French justice investigation into Rafale deal

The Narendra Modi-led Indian government has refused, without officially saying so, to execute the request for mutual assistance from French judges in the context of the corruption investigation into the sale of Rafale fighter jets to India.

India had purchased 36 Rafale fighters from Dassault in 2016 for 7.8 billion euros.

A report by Mediapart, an independent French investigative online newspaper, in a report said it is now an established fact that the Modi regime wants at all costs to bury the corruption affair over the deal.

The report goes as:

The Indian government of Narendra Modi refused, without officially saying so, to execute the French judges’ request for mutual assistance in the context of the corruption investigation into the sale of Dassault’s Rafale to India for 7.8 billion euros.

It is now an established fact: the government of ultranationalist Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants at all costs to bury the corruption affair over the sale of 36 Rafale fighters from Dassault to India, a huge state-to-state contract concluded in 2016 for 7.8 billion euros.

According to our information, the Indian government has de facto refused to execute the request for international criminal assistance made in November 2022 by the two French investigating judges responsible for the judicial investigation opened for “corruption”, “influence peddling” and “favouritism”.

Worse still: rather than officially refusing this request, the Indian Interior Ministry chose to ignore it, and literally ran the French embassy into a frenzy for eight months, before ceasing all communication. So much so that the French ambassador to India, Emmanuel Lenin (now stationed in Brazil), issued a diplomatic note on this subject on July 25, which Mediapart was able to consult.

Contacted by Mediapart, the press services of the government and the Indian Interior Ministry did not respond.

The French and Indian governments are now united by the desire to slow down this overly sensitive investigation, likely to involve three heads of state: Narendra Modi, Emmanuel Macron and his predecessor at the Élysée François Hollande). In France, investigating judges faced two refusals to declassify documents covered by defense secrecy, which they had notably seized during a search at Dassault.

Everything started very badly. In 2019, the former boss of the National Financial Prosecutor’s Office (PNF), Éliane Houlette, had classified without follow-up a first complaint from the anti-corruption NGO Sherpa, without investigating and against the advice of one of his deputies, to “preserve the interests of France”, in his own words. It was not until June 2021 that a judicial investigation was opened, thanks to a second complaint from Sherpa taking up the revelations of our “ Rafale Papers ” investigation.

Our revelations were based on documents from Indian legal proceedings relating to another corruption case relating to the sale of helicopters. By investigating the influential Indian intermediary Sushen Gupta, investigators from the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) discovered that the same Sushen Gupta had received 12.8 million euros in kickbacks from Dassault, via a system of alleged false invoices.
In a note, Gupta claims to have distributed money to “people in office » to facilitate the sale of the Rafale to India. But these elements, revealed by Mediapart, were never used by Indian investigators, as confirmed last month by an investigation by the magazine < /span>.The Caravan

In October 2018, French investigating judges made a request for international criminal assistance, in order to ask the Indian authorities to send them the legal documents relating to Dassault and Sushen Gupta.

French magistrates also called for two searches, which they wanted to witness: one in the offices of one of Gupta’s companies, the other at the headquarters of Dassault Reliance Aerospace Limited (Dral), the co- company created by Dassault and the Reliance group led by billionaire Anil Ambani, very close to Prime Minister Narendra Modi suspected of favouritism – he would have been imposed to Dassault as partner by the Indian government.

The French ambassador in New Delhi takes the matter very seriously. On November 28, 2022, the embassy’s internal security attaché went in person to the Indian Ministry of the Interior to meet the liaison magistrate in charge of international cooperation and give him the request from the French judges. It is also mailed to the ministry a few days later.

The Indian liaison magistrate gave no further news for two months. Then announced to the French, on February 6, 2023, that he was transferred to another position, without being replaced immediately.

The French ambassador, Emmanuel Lenain, is getting impatient. On April 6, his right-hand man and his internal security attaché managed to meet the director of the Indian Ministry of the Interior in charge of international affairs, accompanied by the head of Franco-Indian relations at the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Indians assure that they will respond to the request of the French judges “as soon as possible”.

On April 24, the French embassy learned that a new liaison magistrate responsible for requests for mutual criminal assistance had finally been appointed by the Indian Ministry of the Interior. “When contacted, the latter never responded to our requests. His appointment was however confirmed by the Ministry of the Interior by an email of July 20, 2023 received by the internal security attaché, who again sought to contact this magistrate”, deplores Ambassador Lenain in his diplomatic note.

“In conclusion, this file illustrates the difficulties of mutual criminal assistance with India. Many files are processed by the Indian partner within very long deadlines, often in a partial manner”, adds the ambassador in his note of July 25, suggesting that the French government take advantage of the summit of the Anti-corruption G20 organized on August 11 and 12 in Calcutta to try to “advance certain issues”.

This file above all illustrates the desire of the Modi government, widely shared in Paris, to ensure that the French judicial investigation for corruption into the sale of the Rafale does not succeed. This creates great difficulty for the investigating judges, who find themselves deprived of both French documents classified as defence secrets and Indian judicial documents which prove the payment of hidden commissions.