New Delhi: On Friday, Mediapart, which ran a series of reports in April this year on the 2016 inter-governmental deal, reported that a judge had been appointed for a “highly sensitive” judicial investigation into alleged “corruption and favouritism” in the deal.
According to Mediapart, a “judicial probe into suspected corruption has been opened in France over the 7.8-billion-euro sale to India in 2016 of 36 Dassault-built Rafale fighter aircraft”.
It said the “highly sensitive probe into the inter-governmental deal signed off in 2016 was formally opened on June 14th”. The probe, Mediapart said, had been initiated by the national financial prosecutor’s office (PNF).
According to the report, the PNF initially refused to investigate the sale, and Mediapart had accused it of “burying” the investigation.
Mediapart said the French anti-corruption NGO Sherpa filed a complaint with the Paris tribunal, alleging “corruption”, “influence peddling”, “money laundering”, “favouritism” and undue tax wavering surrounding the deal.
It said that the PNF, the financial crimes branch of the French public prosecution services, confirmed to Mediapart Friday that the “newly opened investigation is focussed on all four of the alleged crimes”.
“The criminal investigation opened on June 14th and led by an independent magistrate, an investigating judge, will, among other elements, examine questions surrounding the actions of former French president François Hollande, who was in office when the Rafale deal was inked, and current French president Emmanuel Macron, who was at the time Hollande’s economy and finance minister, as well as the then defence minister, now foreign affairs minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian,” Mediapart reported.
On Saturday, reacting to the Mediapart report, Congress demanded the formation of a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Rafale deal. It said the stand of the party and its leader Rahul Gandhi, who had raised the issue in the run-up to the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, had been vindicated. Congress communication head Randeep Surjewala asked the Prime Minister to “answer the nation” in view of the judicial inquiry ordered in France, and submit his government to a JPC probe.
In December 2018, the Supreme Court had dismissed a bunch of petitions demanding a court-monitored investigation into the deal.
Dismissing the petitions filed by former Union ministers Yashwant Sinha and Arun Shourie, advocate Prashant Bhushan, AAP leader Sanjay Singh, the Supreme Court said it found “no reason for any intervention… on the sensitive issue of purchase of 36 defence aircraft by the Indian Government”, and that “perception of individuals cannot be the basis of a fishing and roving enquiry… especially in such matters”. It noted that there was “no occasion to doubt the (decision-making) process” leading to the award of the contract. And it refused to get into the question of pricing, stating that “it is certainly not the job of this Court to carry out a comparison of the pricing details in matters like the present”.
In November 2019, a bench headed by the then Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi rejected the review petitions filed by Shourie, Sinha, Bhushan and Singh.
