BJP's big claim against Sonia Gandhi: Ex-Congress president linked to George Soros Foundation-backed organisation

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday accused former Congress president Sonia Gandhi of having links with an organisation funded by the George Soros Foundation. The organisation has been identified as the FDL-AP Foundation. 

As per the BJP, the foundation has backed the view that Kashmir should be a separate nation. 

"This association between Sonia Gandhi and an organisation that has backed the idea of Kashmir as an independent nation expresses the influence of foreign entities on India's internal affairs and the political impact of such connections," it alleged.

As per the screenshots shared by the BJP on X, Sonia Gandhi is among the co-presidents of the organisation along with the likes of former Philippines President Corazon C Aquino, Nobel Laureate and ex-Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez and KDJ Peace Foundation Chairman Kim Dae-Jung. 

The FDL-AP's honorary senior advisors include Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi, Anglican Archbishop of South Africa Desmond Tutu, former Soviet Union president late Mikhail Gorbachev, and former German president Richard von Weizsaecker. 

Despite the US dismissing allegations of backing attempts to destabilise India, BJP Lok Sabha MP Nishikant Dubey said that he would ask 10 questions to Rahul Gandhi in the Lok Sabha on this issue.

Dubey said the media portal Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Portal (OCCRP) and Soros have colluded with opposition parties to dent India's economy and defame the Modi government. OCCRP is an Amsterdam-based media platform known for investigative stories on crime and corruption. 

The BJP added that Sonia Gandhi's leadership of the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation led to a partnership with George Soros Foundation, displaying the influence of foreign funding on Indian organisations. 

"Rahul Gandhi's press conference on Adani was live telecast by George Soros-funded OCCRP, which Gandhi used as a source to criticise Adani. It shows nothing but their strong and dangerous relationship and highlights their attempts to derail the Indian economy," it said.

Furthermore, the BJP shared an old tweet of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor where he addressed Soros as an "old friend" and a "concerned world citizen."

The allegations against Sonia Gandhi came days after the BJP claimed that the US "deep state" colluded with OCCRP and Rahul Gandhi to damage India's image. The BJP accused Rahul Gandhi of using reports from the OCCRP as a basis to attack the government and the Adani Group.

Citing a report in the French media outlet Mediapart, the OCCRP's funding sources included USAID, George Soros and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund. It also claimed that around 50 per cent of the OCCRP's funding comes from the US government. 

Decrying the allegations as "disappointing", the US said on Saturday that the US government has been a champion of media freedom around the world. 

Last month, US prosecutors charged Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar and others for paying over $250 million in bribes between 2020-24 to Indian government officials to win solar energy contracts. The Adani Group dismissed these allegations as "baseless". 

Mediapart’s response

In its response, Mediapart’s publisher and director Carine Fouteau in a statement on December 7, said, “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.” 

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”.