Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has been issued fresh summons by the Enforcement Directorate asking him to appear for questioning on June 13 in the National Herald money laundering case after he expressed inability to turn up the session scheduled for June 8 because he is travelling overseas.
Gandhi is facing a money laundering probe associated with Young Indian, a section 25 company in which, together with his mother, Congress chief Sonia and sister and party general secretary Piyanka, his family controls majority shareholding. Sonia has also been summoned by the agency on June 8 to record her statement. Although she has tested positive for Covid, a Congress spokesperson has said that she would appear before the agency as scheduled.
The ED’s case is based on an income tax investigation report taken cognisance by the courts where alleged money laundering charges have been made. The agency has already questioned senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal, office bearers of the Congress and also associated with the Young Indian.
The investigation is related to Young Indian acquiring the entire shareholding of Associated Journals Ltd, the publisher of National Herald. The AJL also owns properties across major cities.
Dubbing the case a Modi-authored “fake issue” for political vendetta and to divert attention from social unrest, Congress said Sonia and Rahul will comply with the ED summons and defeat the conspiracy. Congress spokesman Abhishek Singhvi called it a “weird case of money laundering in which no money is involved”.
The I-T department, in its assessment order placed before the Delhi HC, had claimed that Young Indian had taken “hawala entry of Rs 1 crore from a shell company of Kolkata”. Besides these charges, the ED is also probing how the entire “process of takeover of the commercial property of AJL was completed within three months from the date of incorporation of YI without paying any taxes and stamp duty”.
The I-T department has already taken action against Young Indian. It withdrew the tax exemption of Young Indian, cancelling its charitable status, and raised a tax demand of £24.91 million on the company and its shareholders, including the Gandhis, for "benefiting from the acquisition of £ 41.44 million properties through AJL".
The ED is also probing an alleged "fake" loan extended by Congress to AJL for £9 million. Sources claim that the purported loan was actually never given to AJL, and was merely a "book entry" which was written off when Young Indian acquired AJL.
