With a French daily claiming that Anil Ambani's company benefited from a French tax waiver in 2015 when India was negotiating the Rafale deal, opposition parties on Saturday alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was acting as a "middleman" for his "crony businessman" and that layers of corruption were now being unravelled.
The Congress alleged that the tax concession for Ambani was due to Modi 'kripa' (blessings) while the Left parties said the Prime Minister's Office "must own up to this".
The parties, which have been accusing Modi of helping Ambani get an offset contract in the Rafale deal, were reacting to a news report in a leading French newspaper Le Monde which claimed that France waived taxes worth 143.7 million euros to a French-registered telecom subsidiary of Reliance Communications in 2015, months after India's announcement of buying 36 Rafale jets
"Neither the period of the tax concession nor the subject matter of the concession relate even remotely to the Rafale procurement concluded during the tenure of the present government."
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