ED questions Sonia Gandhi for over 3 hours on day 3
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday questioned Congress president Sonia Gandhi for over three hours on the third day of her deposition in the National Herald scam. In total, she was questioned for 12 hours in three days and learned to have faced around 100 questions. Like Rahul Gandhi, who faced five days of questioning, officials said all crucial questions, Sonia too put all blame on their co-accused late Motilal Vora.
Sonia repeatedly took the position that no personal assets were made in the Associate Journals Limited (AJL) – Young Indian deal and that the routine affairs were handled by other office bearers, including late Motilal Vora. Her arguments were that she and her son and another accused late Oscar Fernandez were just signatories to the papers presented to them by Motilal Vora, who was also Congress Treasurer, Managing Director of Associated Journals Limited, and Director of Young Indian.
Her first round of questioning took place on July 21 and her second questioning was on July 26, while Congress was conducting protests all over the country against the government. Sonia Gandhi reached the ED’s headquarters in central Delhi at 11 am accompanied by her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and son Rahul Gandhi. The session began around 11.15 am. The team of investigators included the main probe officer and a person who took down statements dictated by the Congress chief. Sonia Gandhi left the ED office around 2 pm along with Vadra, who stayed with her at the ‘Pravartan Bhawan’ (ED headquarters) in order to provide any assistance or medical care to her mother. Congress leaders Pawan Bansal and Mallikarjun Kharge have been questioned by the ED in the past.
Main petitioner and BJP leader Subramanian Swamy through his tweet demanded that after questioning Sonia, the ED should confront her with Rahul Gandhi to find contradictions in their statements.
I think ED should have a questioning of Mother and Son sitting together and asking about their contradiction in answers given separately.
— Subramanian Swamy (@Swamy39) July 26, 2022
Income Tax has already found huge tax evasion of Rs.414 crore by dubiously floating a private company Young Indian with just Rs.5 lakh paid up capital to acquire the public limited company Associated Journal Limited’s more than Rs.2000 crore worth assets by Sonia and Rahul. PGurus published the 105-page Income Tax Assessment Order exposing the blatant violations and corruption by Sonia Gandhi’s family.[1]
Income tax won the case in all forums including the Tribunal and Delhi High Court. The case is presently on appeal by Sonia and Rahul at Supreme Court from November 2019 and not yet listed due to pandemic lockdown. The Herald House in Delhi was ordered to vacate and the Urban Ministry won the case in Delhi High Court the case is pending before Supreme Court from November 2019. ED had already attached the Herald House buildings in Panchkula and Mumbai.
PGurus Managing Editor Sree Iyer wrote a book on the National Herald scam (‘National Herald Frauds’). The book can be purchased from [2].
Reference:
[1] National Herald case: Read 105-page Income Tax Assessment Order against Young Indian exposing Rs.414 crores gain – Jan 22, 2018, PGurus.com
[2] National Herald frauds: Arrogant stealing of prime real estate – another instance of hubris of the Gandhi family Hardcover – Feb 09, 2021, Amazon.in
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With SC equating money laundering with terrorism, all the suspects under investigation are potential terrorists. Now with the stamp of SC the ED need not act in haste for the fear of legal interventions by the highly paid cabal of legal eagles. In stead of sending the convicted money launderers to jail a better punishment would be to recover all the stolen money with interest and penalty leaving nothing for their future generation to lord over.
don’t be too sure. The SC is known to have taken contradictory stands in similar cases! The cases of Nupur and Zubair are standing examples of this!
The arms of law are very long …..