Congress leader Rahul Gandhi In a money laundering case related to the National Herald newspaper, the agency has written a letter to the Enforcement Directorate, seeking more time to appear before it.
Officials told News18 that the agency received an e-mail from Gandhi late on Wednesday, saying he was currently abroad and was requesting the next convenient date to appear.
Apart from Rahul Gandhi, his mother and interim Congress President Sonia Gandhi has also been summoned in the case. While Sonia (75) was asked to appear before the federal agency at its headquarters in central Delhi on June 8, Rahul (51) was asked to appear on June 2.
The case pertains to a probe into alleged financial irregularities in Congress-promoted Young Indian, which owns the National Herald newspaper. National Herald is published by Associated Journals Limited (AJL) and owned by Young Indian Private Limited.
Officials said the ED wants to record the statements of Sonia and Rahul under criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). As part of the probe, the agency had recently questioned senior Congress leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal.
Officials said the questioning of senior Congress leaders and the Gandhi family is part of the ED’s probe to understand the shareholding pattern, financial transactions and role of promoters of Young Indian and AJL.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Congress leaders Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Randeep Singh Surjewala said Sonia Gandhi would comply with the summons and accused the ruling BJP of indulging in “vendetta politics”.
“The Modi government should know that they cannot succeed in their cowardly conspiracy by registering such fake and fabricated cases,” Singhvi said.
,National Herald The newspaper was started in 1942. At that time the British tried to stop it, today the Modi government is also doing what the British did. Now ED is being used for this purpose. This is the politics of vengeance and revenge by the BJP, as they have done with other opponents of the country.
Hitting back at the old party, Union Minister Anurag Thakur said that government agencies only do their work. “It is not related to cabinet decisions and government agencies do their job.”
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