Aishwarya Rai leaves ED office after five hours of questioning in Panama Papers leak case. Watch

Aishwarya Rai was summoned by the Enforcement Directorate on Monday in connection with the Panama Papers leak case. She was questioned for almost five hours.

Aishwarya Rai waded through a sea of journalists and others as she left the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office on Monday after being questioned for around five hours in the Panama Papers leak case. She appeared before the agency in Delhi.

Aishwarya Rai Bachchan leaves from the ED office after appearing before the agency in the Panama Papers case. (ANI)

The ED recorded Aishwarya’s statement in the case over allegations of stashing wealth abroad under the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999. She had earlier submitted records on the foreign payments under investigation.

The ED had issued notices to the Bachchan family asking them to explain their foreign remittances since 2004 under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) of the Reserve Bank of India.

The Panama Papers are leaked files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca. The documents, which were revealed to the media in 2016, showed how many stashed away their wealth in offshore tax-havens. Several influential Indians, including Aishwarya and her father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan, were named in these records.

After the leak in 2016, Amitabh said that he has sent money abroad only under Indian rules. He also denied links to any of the companies that appeared in the Panama Papers and said that ‘it is possible that (his) name has been misused’.

Meanwhile, Aishwarya is set to reunite with Mani Ratnam, who directed her debut film Iruvar, for her next, Ponniyin Selvan. The film will mark her return to the big screen after four years; she was last seen in Fanney Khan, which released in 2018.

Ponniyin Selvan is based on Kalki Krishnamurthy’s Tamil historical fiction novel, which chronicles the story of the early days of Arulmozhivarman, one of the most powerful kings in the South, who went on to become the great Chola emperor Rajaraja Chola I. The first instalment of the film will release sometime next year. It is reportedly being made in two parts.

(With inputs from ANI)