‘Why is the government running away from inquiry?’
Interview with Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera.
THE latest disclosures by the French online investigative journal Mediapart about proof of a cover-up of a Rafale kickback payment to defence middleman Sushen Gupta has created a political storm of sorts. According to Congress spokesman Pawan Khera, the documents reveal that the Indian intelligence agencies the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (E.D.) were in possession of documents that proved Sushen Gupta’s nexus with the “political high command” in the BJP government, meaning the Prime Minister, and Dassault Aviation, the manufacturer of Rafale fighter jets.
Excerpts from the interview he gave Frontline:
In the Mediapart disclosures, there is a hint of direct intervention by the Prime Minister in closing the deal at a much higher price than that negotiated by the Indian Negotiating Team. This also vindicates the Congress’ stand on corruption in the Rafale deal. How is the party planning other top officers. Whether there was a connection between Rafale and the midnight drama is not known but it certainly added to the intrigue around the Rafale scam and was seen as the reason for Alok Verma’s removal.
On March 26, 2019, the E.D. raided Sushen Gupta in connection with the Agustawestland case and reportedly recovered incriminatory documents. Pawan Khera said at the press conference that the documents included the benchmark price document of August 10, 2015, a record of discussions by the Indian Negotiating Team of the Defence Ministry, the Excel sheet of calculations made by the Defence Ministry and Eurofighter’s counter-offer of 20 per cent discount to the Government of India. A note dated June 24, 2014, sent by Sushen Gupta to Dassault offering a meeting with “the political high command” was also recovered. Pawan Khera wanted to know whether such a meeting had taken place with the “high command” in the Modi government.
He alleged that “this was nothing short of endangering national security, sedition and a gross violation of the Official Secrets Act”. The documents of the Indian Negotiating Team giving details about how it calculated the price of the aircraft was especially disturbing. In the to take this to the people, especially when elections to four State Assemblies are round the corner?
These are important disclosures and the Congress is planning to educate the people about the new details now. Our spokespersons and other leaders are going to all parts of the country and will talk about the details through press conferences and other public interactions. Then the Congress Parliamentary Board will deliberate on the issue to decide how it can be raised during the forthcoming winter session of Parliament. We will take it to all corners of the country and explain how massive corruption has taken place in the deal and how this government has done its best to cover up the scam. We are sure these facts will educate people about what really happened. Never in the history of India has a Prime Minister personally intervened, undermining the stand taken by the Indian Negotiating Team. There is a note on the file, which is in public domain now, where the Defence Ministry has requested the charge sheet against Sushen Gupta, the E.D. said he had gained “sensitive data which should have only been in possession of the Ministry of Defence”. It is unclear how Sushen Gupta got hold of these documents, said Mediapart. But in a note dated September 2012, which was recovered by the E.D. during its raid, Sushen Gupta suggested that he had handed over money to some Indian officials on Dassault’s behalf. “The risk is taken, you have an agent we have paid, now make sure it is legal clean and defendable. […] No money no decisions […] People sitting in office asking for money. […] Those people will, if we don’t pay, put us in Jail.” In March 2019, the E.D. arrested Sushen Gupta. After spending two months in custody, he was charged with money laundering in the Agustawestland case and then released on bail. Sushen Gupta has denied any wrongdoing.
In December 2018, a three-member Supreme Court bench comprising the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and Justices S.K. Kaul and K.M. Joseph declined to order a probe into the corruption allegations in the aircraft deal. In November 2019, the same bench dismissed review petitions filed by Arun Shourie, Prashant Bhushan and Yashwant Sinha against the previous judgment, putting a lid on the “Rafale Papers”. The review
Defence Minister to request the Prime Minister’s Office [PMO] not to intervene. This is bizarre. It is unprecedented that without a tender you go ahead and buy something worth Rs.526 crore and spend Rs.1,670 crore, you sacrifice the transfer of technology clause, you remove the anti-corruption clause. Why is the government not acting, why is it running away from inquiry?
But is it not a fact that kickbacks started being paid between 2007 and 2012 when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power, and the BJP has been able to only highlight this aspect, obfuscating all other details? Is that making the Congress somewhat defensive about the whole issue? Is that the reason why Congress leaders are not able to raise the issue so forcefully?
I don’t think so. We have to understand that even if there was payment of kickbacks during 2007-12 when we were in power, there was no deal then, so where is the question of quid pro quo. If you go back, there was payment of kickbacks to the same middleman, Sushen Gupta, by Dassault during 2000-04, so does it mean that the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government was also corrupt? There has to be a deal, there has to be a money trail, there has to be an agreement to establish quid pro quo.
Mere payment of commission by a company to a middleman does not make it corruption if no deal has been signed. In this case, there are documents in the public domain to directly link the middleman with the “political high command”, then the intervention by the petitions were prompted by investigative reports in The Hindu by N. Ram, who relied on Defence Ministry documents to highlight inconsistencies in the Rafale deal. The then Attorney General K.K. Venugopal alleged in court that the documents were stolen and, therefore, the court should not consider them. Making a strong rebuttal, Ram said that they had not stolen the documents from the Ministry but got them from reliable sources. He said: “No force on earth can make me or us reveal the source of the documents, because we have given our word. We are fully protected by Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, the fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression and also by the Right to Information Act, specifically 8(1)(i) and 8(2), which override the Official Secrets Act…. There is no question of any national security interest being compromised by it.”
FRENCH INVESTIGATION
While the Supreme Court gave a clean chit to the government on any wrongdoing with regard to the Rafale deal, a report by the French anti-corruption agency found that Dassault had paid more than €1million as bribe to Defsys for the manufacture of 50 models of the Rafale and more than €7 million in secret commissions to offshore accounts
PMO sidelining the negotiating team, and then the signing of the deal, by getting the no corruption, no commission, no middleman clause removed. All this information has been with the CBI since 2018 and with the E.D. since 2019. So why has the government chosen to sit over it and not conduct an inquiry?
The Congress made the Rafale scam its main battle cry during the 2019 Lok Sabha election, with its
‘chowkidar chor hai’ slogan. It backfired. Do you think this sort of upfront attack on the Prime Minister proved counterproductive?
If you mean the 2019 election results, the 2019 election, unfortunately, got completely incumbent upon Pulwama. A lot of other issues, whether it was Rafale, price rise, unemployment, everything got buried in Pulwama. Let’s not use election results as the yardstick to measure whether our message has been transmitted to the people or not. When Pulwama happened, all other issues got sidelined.
But it is also not a fact that the Congress has not been able to make Rafale corruption a part of the public discourse, like we saw with the Bofors scandal. Why do you think this is so?
If you ask me, 2019 election was all about Pulwama, but that does not mean our message did not reach the people. We are taking it up with all seriousness. Now with new details out in the public domain, this has become even more serious and I hope people understand what we meant by chowkidar chor hai. and shell companies. It confirmed that Sushen Gupta had supplied classified documents relating to the deal to Dassault even as talks between the company and the Indian Negotiating Team were frozen over the issue of benchmark pricing.
In February 2019, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India tabled its audit report in Parliament pointing out procedural violations in defence procurement. As per the report, Dassault’s technical bid was at first rejected but later allowed to incorporate India-specific enhancements that met bid-compliant qualitative requirements. The report also unequivocally stated that the defence acquisition process needed reforms and streamlining.
In France, a judicial investigation was launched in July this year by judges Virginie Tilmont and Pascal Gastineau, indicating that the curtain will not be brought down on the Rafale issue too soon. While 36 Rafale jets were delivered to India more than a year ago and are safely ensconced in Indian territory, the persistence of French journalists and law-keepers might keep the ghost of Rafale alive for the ruling dispensation in India despite the clean chit given by their own investigative agencies. m