The Scorpene deal scam was an Indian bribery scandal, in which Rs. 500 crores (about USD 10 million) were alleged to have been paid to government decision makers by Thales. Defence minister Pranab Mukherjee had approved a deal to build Scorpene-class submarines worth Rs 19,000 crore with Thales in October 2005. The investigating agency, Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), found no evidence of corruption in the deal in 2008. Scorpene submarines are now being built in India under a technology transfer agreement that was part of that contract.
Allegations and investigation
The amount was allegedly channeled via middlemen such as Abhishek Verma, who is the prime accused in the Navy War Room spy scandal.
The investigation moved very slowly. In 2007, Prashant Bhushan of the Centre for Public Interest Litigation filed a petition with the Delhi High Court to investigate whether there had been kickbacks in the Scorpene submarine deal. The High Court took a strong line with the investigating agency CBI, saying “We feel dissatisfied with that you’ve done so far. If you’ve tried to shield someone, then we will come down very heavily on you”. Thales refuted the charges, with its country director in India, Francois Dupont, saying, “The e-mails are forgeries and we have sued the news magazine for this.”
Result
In 2008, the CBI told the Delhi High Court that after preliminary investigations, it had found no evidence of payment of kickbacks in the Rs 14.35 billion deal.
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