The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: The French investigative media outlet Mediapart has condemned the BJP for “exploiting” its reporting and stated that there are “no available facts” to support allegations of a conspiracy involving the US state department, US billionaire George Soros and the Indian opposition aimed at “destabilising” the government.
The ruling party, in parliament and on its social media accounts, cited the reporting of Mediapart on another investigative media network, the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), to accuse the Congress and its leaders of targeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi with the alleged backing of Soros and the US state department.
“Mediapart firmly condemns the instrumentalisation of its recently published investigative article about OCCRP by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in order to serve BJP’s political agenda and attack press freedom,” said Mediapart’s publisher and director Carine Fouteau in a statement on Sunday (December 7).
She further asserted that the “BJP wrongly exploited Mediapart’s article in order to spread fake news that we never published”.
“There are no facts available supporting the conspiracy theory promoted by BJP,” said Mediapart’s publisher, expressing “full support to the courageous Indian and international journalists who report and investigate in India”.
On Thursday, BJP lawmakers referred to the Mediapart report to criticise Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha, accusing him of colluding with the OCCRP and US billionaire Soros.
This was further mirrored in social media posts with the BJP publishing a series of X posts that went further to directly accuse the US state department of being part of the conspiracy as USAID gave substantial funds to the OCCRP, as per public documents.
BJP MP Sambit Patra echoed the allegations during a press conference on Thursday.
The US embassy in India had issued a statement on Saturday saying it was “disappointing that the ruling party in India would make these kinds of accusations”.
This is not Mediapart’s first encounter with India – or the BJP. Since 2018, the French media outlet has published a series of exclusive investigative reports alleging crony corruption in the sale of 36 Rafale fighter jets to India.
At the time, the Indian government and the BJP dismissed these allegations.
In its latest report on the Rafale deal, published in December 2023, Mediapart accused India of obstructing a French judicial probe into the corruption allegations.
“It is now an established fact: the Indian government of ultra-nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi is keen to bury at all costs the corruption case concerning the sale of 36 Dassault-built Rafale fighter jets to India,” the outlet wrote.
Mediapart’s latest investigation into the Amsterdam-based OCCRP relied largely on public documents and filmed interviews given to German broadcaster NDR by OCCRP founder Drew Sullivan and several senior US officials.
The Mediapart report highlighted that the OCCRP had “accepted several US government donations that it is obliged to spend on investigations into certain countries that Washington considers to be a priority matter”.
It outlined projects funded by the US state department, which focused on Russia, Venezuela, tax havens in Malta and Cyprus, and drug cartels in Mexico. However, Mediapart’s investigation had no mention of any US state department grants targeting India in any OCCRP report.
Following the publication of Mediapart’s article, the OCCRP issued a statement on its website, calling the claims “simply wrong”.
“OCCRP has no limits on its journalism and no donor influences our reporting,” the media group stated.