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ED seals Young Indian office at Herald House amid PMLA probe
The ED on Wednesday sealed the office of Young Indian Pvt Ltd (YI), at Herald House on Delhi’s Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in its ongoing money laundering probe linked with the National Herald newspaper, people familiar with the matter said.
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Wednesday sealed the office of Young Indian Pvt Ltd (YI), at Herald House on Delhi’s Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg in its ongoing money laundering probe linked with the National Herald newspaper, people familiar with the matter said.
The “temporary seal”, officers said, has been put at YI office to preserve the evidence that could not be collected during Tuesday’s raids due to non-availability of the authorised representative of the company.
An ED officer said that Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge, who is the principal officer of YI, came to Herald House on Tuesday, when raids were going on the premises, but left before the evidence could be collected. “Summons have been sent to him (Kharge) to get the search conducted. Till then, the premises has been sealed. Once the evidence is collected, the seal will be lifted,” said this officer.
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A notice posted outside the YI office on Wednesday stated that it cannot be opened without the prior permission of ED. A second officer said that only the YI office has been sealed, and the rest of the offices at Herald House are functioning as usual.
The central agency on Tuesday conducted raids at 12 locations in Kolkata and Delhi, including Herald House in connection with the case.
As news about ED sealing parts of Herald House spread, security was increased at the Congress headquarters on 24, Akbar Road and outside party chief Sonia Gandhi’s residence at 10, Janpath. Delhi Police officers deployed at the spot -- their arrangement included a large bus normally used for detentions -- said this was in anticipation of Congress workers launching a protest.
Congress leaders condemned the deployment.
“Delhi police blocking the road to AICC headquarters has become a norm rather than an exception! Why have they just done so is mysterious…” former Union minister Jairam Ramesh tweeted.
He and two other senior Congress leaders, Ajay Maken and Abhishek Manu Singhvi, later addressed a press conference slamming the Centre for trying to create an “environment of fear”, and stressed that their party would not back down from raising issues in public interest as any responsible Opposition should.
ED has extensively questioned Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi in the case. While the Congress president was interrogated for almost 11 hours over three days late last month, Rahul, a member of Parliament form Wayanad, was at ED office for 50 hours over five days in June.
The Gandhis are the majority stakeholders in Young Indian.
AJL was founded in November 1937 by Jawaharlal Nehru and published the National Herald, Qaumi Awaz in Urdu and Navjeevan in Hindi. Income Tax proceedings, initiated in 2017, which are the basis of ED’s probe, revealed that YI purchased the ₹90.21 crore interest free loan given by AICC to AJL, by making a payment of only ₹50 lakh to the former.
Investigators said YI was founded in November 2010, just 23 days prior to assignment of the ₹90 crore loan, with a nominal capital of ₹5 Lakh. “Young Indian did not even have any funds of its own for purchase of the loan of ₹90 crore of the AICC,” an IT department document seen by HT stated.
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The Congress has repeatedly said that the transaction was done to help save the newspaper and pay the salaries of journalists and staffers at a time when AJL faced huge debts. It argues that the decision helped revive the organisation and blames the central government of raking up an old issue to target the Gandhi family and for political vendetta.
The Gandhis are learnt to have told ED during their separate questioning sessions that no personal gains were made in the Congress-AJL-National Herald deal as Young Indian was a not-for-profit company established under Section 25 of the Companies Act.
They also told ED that AJL continues to have possession of all its assets and Young Indian neither “owns nor controls” these properties.
The ED action in the case was initiated after the agency late last year registered a fresh case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after a trial court here took cognisance of an Income Tax department probe against Young Indian based on a private criminal complaint by former Bharatiya Janata Party MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013.
