French aircraft maker Dassault Aviation paid at least 7.5 million euros (approximately Rs 650 million) in kickbacks to a middleman to help it clinch the Rafale fighter jet, according to a media report. Mediapart, a French online journal, also claimed that India’s agencies didn’t investigate the allegations despite evidence. The journal published alleged false invoices that it says Dassault had used to pay off alleged middleman Sushen Gupta.

“It involves offshore companies, dubious contracts and ‘false’ invoices,” the report said. Mediapart said 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.”

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India had signed the Rs 58,000 crore deal with France in September 2016 for the procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets, with the first batch of five arriving in India on July 29 last year. Opposition parties led by the Congress allege the price at which India was buying Rafale aircraft now is ₹1,670 crores for each, three times the initial bid of ₹526 crores by Dassault when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was trying to close the deal. In a February 2019 report, the government’s auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, said India had not overpaid for the jets. The Supreme Court in November 2019 dismissed review petitions against its clean chit to the Narendra Modi government in the Rafale deal on the grounds that they lacked merit.

However, in July 2021, France reportedly launched a judicial investigation after a Mediapart report alleged corruption, influence peddling and favouritism in the Rafale deal.

The French news outlet had also published a three-part investigative report in April on the Rafale deal.