The Enforcement Directorate filed a fresh chargesheet in the Delhi excise policy linked money laundering case. The fourth supplementary complaint mentions Delhi’s former deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, who is the 29th accused named. The chargesheet has 271 operative pages along with 2,100 pages of documents that the investigation agency relied upon.
Earlier in the day, the Delhi High Court sought the ED’s response to a plea by Sisodia seeking bail in the case. Justice Dinesh Kumar Sharma issued notice to the ED on the regular bail plea and interim bail application of the senior AAP leader, who is in judicial custody at present.
The high court granted time to the ED to file a verification report within a week and listed the matter for further hearing on May 11. Sisodia has filed the regular bail plea as well as an interim bail application on grounds of illness of his wife.
Senior advocate Dayan Krishnan and Mohit Mathur, representing Sisodia, submitted that the AAP leader’s wife has been suffering from multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease, for the past 20 years and it was likely to worsen. The ED’s counsel opposed the plea contending that Sisodia was the key conspirator in the case.
Two days ago, the ED accused the AAP of “using” a part of the Rs 100-crore kickbacks allegedly received from the ‘south group’ liquor lobby to meet its expenditure for the Goa assembly poll campaign in 2022. The accusation has been made in the agency’s supplementary chargesheet.
It has arraigned as accused a media publicity company, Chariot Productions Media Pvt Ltd, and its owner-promoter Rajesh Joshi in the prosecution complaint. A Delhi court took cognisance of this chargesheet on Monday. “A careful perusal of findings of investigation has revealed that several persons, including Rajesh Joshi and his company Chariot Productions Media Pvt Ltd, are actually involved in several processes/activities connected with a part of proceeds of crime, ie, the kickbacks of Rs 100 crore received from the South Group,” the ED alleged.
“Chariot Productions Media Pvt Ltd is not only involved in making payments through banking channel but also in cash through hawala network… and the actual beneficiary of these payments is AAP as these payments were used for meeting expenditure of Goa elections in year 2022,” it alleged.
It said the money laundering investigation launched by it in this case last year under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) found that “a part of proceeds of crime of Rs 30 crore were transferred through hawala network to make payments to vendors for advertisement in Goa election campaign of AAP.” “The payment was made both through banking channel as well as through cash,” the ED said.
It added, as part of the chargesheet filed in this case last month before a local court, “a part of money trail of proceeds of crime of Rs 80 lakh (approx) is traced back to advertisement vendors and survey for AAP during Goa elections.”
“All these transactions are interconnected, which represent the utilisation of proceeds of crime of Rs 100 crore through various multiple processes and activities that are interconnected for the reason that ultimately all the money was used by the leaders of AAP, including ministers and their associates in AAP government who were the architect of this liquor scam,” it alleged.
The AAP has repeatedly denied these allegations. The ‘south group’ liquor lobby is allegedly linked to Telangana CM K Chandrashekhar Rao’s MLC daughter K Kavitha and YSR Congress MP from Ongole Magunta Srinivasulu Reddy, his son Raghav Magunta and others. The ED also said Kavitha held “multiple meetings” with Nair prior and post the policy was drafted and came in effect.
A total of 12 people have been arrested by the ED in this case, including Sisodia, who is in judicial custody at present. It is alleged that the Delhi government’s excise policy for 2021-22 to grant licences to liquor traders allowed cartelisation and favoured certain dealers, who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge strongly refuted by the AAP. The policy was subsequently scrapped and the Delhi lieutenant governor recommended a CBI probe, following which the ED registered a case under the PMLA.
(With PTI inputs)
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