France has ordered an inquiry into the 2016 Rafale Fighter Plane deal with India.
France has ordered to investigate the deal of Rafale Fighter Plane. A judge has been appointed to investigate the matter. In 2016, a multi-billion dollar deal was signed with India for the Rafale Jail. The National Financial Prosecutor (PNF) of France gave this information on Friday. Under this deal worth about $ 9.3 billion, 36 fighter jets are to be delivered to India. This deal was done between the Government of India and the French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation. There have been allegations of corruption regarding this deal for a long time.
Earlier, the National Financial Prosecutor had refused to investigate the Rafale deal. After this, the French investigative website ‘Mediapart’ made serious allegations against the prosecutor. It said that the French investigative agency wants to suppress the ongoing doubts about the Rafale deal. Earlier in April, Mediapart claimed that crores of rupees were given as brokerage to those who helped in getting the Rafale deal done. Mediapart said that some of this money was given as bribe to Indian officials.
India denies corruption in the deal
Dassault vehemently denied these claims and claimed that there was no rigging or anything wrong in the Rafale deal. On the other hand, the central government in India denied any kind of corruption in this deal. After these reports surfaced, the French NGO Sherpa filed an official complaint for corruption. Sherpa had earlier asked for a probe in 2018 as well, but PNF did not take any action. At the same time, only after Sherpa’s complaint, a French judge ordered an inquiry into the Rafale deal.
Why is there controversy over the deal?
During this deal, Reliance Company, run by Anil Ambani, has been in the midst of controversies. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has also raised questions many times regarding this deal with Reliance. Dassault signed a deal in 2012 for the delivery of 126 Rafale aircraft to India. For this, talks were being held with the Indian aerospace company Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). According to Dassault, by 2015, these talks had reached their final stage. But then in 2016 suddenly HAL was replaced by Reliance Group and under the new deal, the delivery of 36 aircraft was fixed. The opposition started besieging the government regarding this.
