“I don’t lie” says Dassault CEO; Twitterati disagrees

CEO of Dassault Aviation, Eric Trappier, on Tuesday, November 13, talked about the Rafale deal in an interview with the news agency ANI.

He stated that his company had chosen Reliance as an offset partner, and denied allegations of corruption in the Rafale jet deal with India saying it was a “clean deal”. He added that the price in the contract for 36 aircraft was brought down by 9% after government-to-government negotiations.

In response to a question on Congress president Rahul Gandhi’s allegations that Dassault paid ₹284 crore in alleged “kickbacks” to a Reliance firm to purchase land near an airfield in Nagpur, Trappier added, “I am sad to hear that. We have had a long experience with the Congress.”

Eric Trappier’s claims have received criticism from the twitterati. Many called him out on the discrepancies in what he said and the facts known. Some even labelled the interview as a set up because the questions being asked were not in-depth.

Ajai Shukla, a retired colonel and a seasoned journalist who writes on the subject of defence policy, production and acquisition suggested some question which should have been asked instead of the superficial ones;

Here are a collection of some of the tweets, questioning Eric Trappier’s interview: