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Indian court demands answers on submarine kickback charge

NEW DELHI: An Indian court on Friday demanded answers from the government over allegations that a French defence firm paid bribes to secure a deal to sell six Scorpion submarines to the Indian Navy.

Delhi High Court chief judge Vijender Jain gave the Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) three weeks to answer the charges levelled by a private anti-corruption watchdog.

India and France signed the deal for the purchase of the submarines in October.

The watchdog, the Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), said middlemen were involved in clinching the 2.4 billion-euro deal despite a ban on military brokers in India.

“Although the government had prior information about the shady deal and involvement of middlemen as pointed out by the Central Vigilance Commission and the defence ministry, the contract was finalised for obvious reasons,” CPIL said. The watchdog also claimed that the government ordered CBI federal investigators to probe reports of theft by defence personnel of classified military documents, in order to divert attention from the submarine deal.

“The government, instead of acting against middlemen, chose to initiate a CBI inquiry against certain defence personnel on the pretext of leaking war room secrets,” the Centre claimed in its petition to the court.

India’s defence minister last month denied bribery allegations after the right-wing opposition charged that 100 million dollars was paid to Indian intermediaries.

Indian government officials signed the Scorpion contract and officials from Aramis, which is 50 percent, owned by French state shipbuilder Direction des Constructions Navales (DCN), and defence and engineering giant Thales. A former Thales executive had accused the firm of organising a centralised slush fund to bribe and corrupt officials to win contracts, in an interview with the French daily Le Monde in September last year.

The company issued a denial of the story stressing the executive had been sacked for his involvement in “irregularities”.

The Scorpion allegations surfaced a few months after New Delhi threw out a multi-million-dollar artillery deal with South Africa’s Denel over charges the armament firm used brokers to bribe Indians to secure the contract. AFP

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