Stoking another controversy regarding the Rafale fighter jet deal, the French news portal Mediapart has now claimed Indian businessman Sushen Gupta was paid millions of Euros by Dassault. In turn, Gupta, who acted as a middleman, provided them with confidential information from the Indian Defence Ministry about the ongoing negotiations regarding the deal.
This revelation came days after the same news portal said Gupta was paid one million Euros as a gift after the Rafale deal was inked in 2016. The Government-to-Government deal between India and France is worth over 7.8 billion Euros for 36 Rafale jets.
Incidentally, at least 12 jets have already joined the IAF in the last few months at its Ambala airbase. Ten more Rafales will land in the next two months. The IAF plans to have two squadrons (one squadron has 18 jets) of Rafale. While one is based at Ambala, the other one is coming up in Hashimara in the east. All the 36 jets will be part of the IAF by 2022.
The latest French media reports on Thursday said Gupta and his intermediaries received “several million Euros” from Dassault and its affiliates. Dassault is the French aerospace conglomerate and manufactures Rafale jet.
In turn, Gupta and his intermediaries “leaked confidential information”, including crucial documents of the Indian Defence Ministry about the Indian negotiating team’s positions and arguments, it was likely to put forward during the negotiations.
Documents accessed by the French media portal suggest that Gupta allegedly acted as a middleman for Dassault Aviation and its industrial partner Thales, for several years, starting early 2000s. Thales is a Paris-based defence-electronics company in which Dassault and the French Government are stakeholders.
According to the Mediapart report, Thales “paid Sushen Gupta several million Euros in secret commissions to offshore accounts and shell companies, using inflated invoices for software consulting”.
Sushen Gupta was reportedly hired by the French side at the beginning of the 2000s, when India started looking to procure 126 Medium Multi-Role Combat Aircrafts (MMRCA). His contract reportedly lasted until the signing of the final agreement between India and France.
Incidentally, Gupta was also accused of laundering money in another controversial deal Agusta Westland for VVIP helicopters. He was arrested in 2019 and released on bail.
That deal was scrapped when charges of corruption surfaced.
Gupta allegedly used a web of companies including IDS in India and Interstellar in Mauritius and several accounts in Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
According to the report, an individual named “Pierre” at Dassault was the point person for disbursement of the commissions via front companies registered in Mauritius.
An internal Dassault document published by the French portal shows that the Dassault placed 2 million Euros-worth of orders with IDS in 2004, and planned to place 4.6 million more. “Between 2002 and 2005, IDS transferred 900,000 Euros to Interstellar”, Medipart reported.
Another Singapore-based company Interdev was used to launder money, which according to the report, was floated as a “system integrator for Dassault in Asia”, but later identified by Mediapart as a shell company run by “a straw man for the Guptas who is currently on the run in South Africa”.
An account spreadsheet, allegedly belonging to Gupta, has been accessed by Mediapart. According to its report, Dassault has been designated with the code ‘D’ in the spreadsheet.
‘D’ reportedly paid 14.6 million Euros to Interdev in Singapore over the period 2004-2013, out of which Interdev transferred 2.6 million Euros to IDS, whereas 11.9 million Euros were transferred to Interstellar Mauritius.
The French report unveiled Gupta’s access to privileged government information during the price negotiations cycle between Dassault and the Government of India, which spanned across several years.
“On April 13, 2012, his [Gupta’s] Singapore shell company, Interdev, drew up three contracts for consultancy services for Dassault, for a total of 4 million Euros. The work involved providing research reports on the defence market in India and identifying potential industrial partners,” Mediapart’s Yann Philippin reported on Thursday. “Sushen Gupta was involved in the process of selecting Indian industrial partners,” Philippin wrote.
An electronic ticket accessed by Mediapart shows that Gupta was booked on an Air India flight from Paris to New Delhi on September 7, 2012. Another document with notes cited by Mediapart, suggests he was likely finishing a meeting with Dassault Aviation on the same day.
Scores of documents accessed by Mediapart, including the confidential Defence Ministry notes, shows Gupta’s vital position during the final year of the price negotiations.
“He obtained confidential documents from the Indian Defence Ministry on the subject of the dispute over the purchase costs. These included the minutes of meetings by the Indian Negotiating Team (INT), the arguments they had prepared to present to the French, and detailed notes on the calculations of the costs [benchmarking of costs] and the methodology employed. Gupta even obtained an Excel sheet created by one member of the INT for calculating the purchase price,” Mediapart report alleged.
It said Gupta also managed the entire contents of a revised confidential offer from one of Rafale’s prime competitors Eurofighter, sent to then Defence Minister Arun Jaitley.
The confidential information gathered by the alleged middleman was used by the French side to counter the Indian negotiating team’s arguments.
In one of the spreadsheets created on January 20, 2016, Gupta allegedly suggested an overall purchase cost of 7.87 billion Euros. The French negotiating team reportedly proposed the exact same amount in the meeting the next day. The final Rafale jets contract was agreed between the two sides at a cost of 7.87 billion Euros after a few months.
