The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has accepted Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s plea to defer her questioning in connection with a money laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper. The ED has now asked her to record her statement with the agency sometime in late July.
She was issued a second summons for June 23 by the agency but the 75-year-old Congress leader could not keep the date as she is recuperating from post-Covid implications. She has been strictly advised to rest at home following her hospitalisation on account of Covid and lung infection.
The ED has advanced her questioning in the case for about four weeks and asked her to depose sometime in the last week of July, sources said.
The move comes following a plea from Sonia, communicated on Wednesday to the ED, to postpone the questioning by a few weeks in the wake of medical advice to take rest.
Sonia was first issued the notice for an appearance on June 8 but after she reported positive for Covid-19, the summons for June 23 was issued. The Congress president was on Monday discharged from a private Delhi hospital where she was admitted for treatment of Covid-19.
She was admitted to the hospital on June 12, days after she tested positive for Covid-19 on June 2.
Her son and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi has been questioned by the agency in the same case for about 54 hours over five days.
The probe relates to alleged financial irregularities in the Congress-promoted Young Indian Private Limited, which owns the National Herald newspaper. The move to question the Gandhis was initiated after the ED recently registered a fresh case under Prevention of Money Laundering Act
(PMLA) after a trial court here took cognisance of an Income Tax department probe against Young Indian based on a private criminal complaint filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013.
Sonia and Rahul are among the promoters and majority shareholders of Young Indian. Like her son, the Congress president too has 38 per cent shareholding.
The Congress has accused the Centre of targeting Opposition leaders by misusing investigative agencies and has dubbed such action a “political vendetta”.
