who is benefitting?
It took 15 years to discuss the deal with
Dassault Rafale. Then, overnight, India concluded an Inter-Governmental
Agreement (IGA) with France for the purchase of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a
cost of €7.87 billion, the first fighter aircraft deal since the purchase of
Sukhois from Russia in the late 1990s. Government sources claim that there is
no question of any middleman or a broker. History indicates whenever the deals
are investigated, there were brokers and middleman in every defence deal. One
has to study the context in which such deals are clinched. The Rafale deal
was finalised just after the Uri attack. After the 26/11 attack on
Mumbai, billions of dollars of search and surveillance equipment was
purchased by both business houses and government. Nowadays, there is more
finesse and it is impossible to pinpoint the brokers. If we turn to the gfiles
archives, it carried a cover story in March 2012 titled, “India’s gift to
Sarkozy”
(http://www.gfilesindia.com/Contents/pdfMagazine/Mar2012/Default.html) The
story carried a box in which gfiles stated, “It is significant that hard
on the heels of the signing of the agreement between RIL (Reliance Industries
Limited) and Dassault Aviation, an RIL spokesman said “the objective of the MoU
is to identify areas where both the companies can work together in the defence
sector.” The RIL spokesperson said that while there has been no commitment on
any kind of investment or joint venture, teams from both the companies will sit
together to chalk out strategic opportunities. The outcome will depend on the talks
and only after the final agreement between Dassault and the Government is
signed for the MMRCA, he said, refusing to divulge details on who will lead
negotiations from the RIL side. The government has now signed the Rafale
deal!
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