STATE TIMES NEWS
NEW DELHI: The Enforcement Directorate has filed a chargesheet against Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and others on charges of money laundering in the National Herald case.
Special judge Vishal Gogne examined the chargesheet, which was filed on April 9, on the point of cognisance and posted the matter for further proceedings on April 25.
The chargesheet also names Congress leader Sam Pitroda and Suman Dubey as accused persons.
“The present prosecution complaint shall next be taken up for consideration on the aspect of cognisance before this court on April 25, 2025 when the special counsel for the ED and IO shall also ensure the production of the case diaries for perusal by the court,” the judge said.
The chargesheet was filed under Sections 3 (money laundering) and 4 (punishment for money laundering) of Prevention of Money Laundering Act by ED’s special public prosecutor N K Matta.
“Let the complaint be checked and registered. The Ahlmad (court staff) shall ensure that the entire file/documents are properly paginated. The ED is directed to file a soft copy of the complaint and documents in readable/OCR format by the next date,” the judge said.
The special judge dealing with the cases of lawmakers also noted the submission of the ED, which said it would be moving an application before the district judge for the transfer of the case related to the predicate offence, being probed by the CBI for alleged cheating, criminal conspiracy and other offences, based on which the ED had started its investigation in the present matter, from another court to Judge Gogne’s court.
The predicate offence is required to be tried by the same court which takes cognisance of the offence under Section 3 PMLA, the jude said, and Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi were members of Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha respectively.
“Essentially, the two offences viz the predicate offence and the PMLA offence are required to be tried by the same court,” the judge said.
Since the allegations in the present complaint were arising from the predicate offence, the file in the predicate offence were required to be called for perusal, the court added.
“However, the power of assignment or transfer of a matter is not vested with this court and is rather the prerogative of the Principal District & Sessions Judge, Rouse Avenue Courts Complex, New Delhi,” the court pointed out.
The ED investigation began in 2021 after a metropolitan magistrate in Patiala House courts in Delhi took cognisance of a private complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy on June 26, 2014.
The complaint, the ED said, highlighted a “criminal conspiracy” by several prominent political figures, including the first family of the Congress party led by Sonia, her MP son Rahul, late Congress leaders Motilal Vora and Oscar Fernandes aside from Dubey, Pitroda and a private company Young Indian for their alleged involvement in money laundering in relation to the fraudulent takeover of properties valued over Rs 2,000 crore belonging to the Associated Journals Limited (AJL).
“The legal proceedings against the accused have faced challenges but have been upheld by both the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India, allowing the investigation to proceed,” the ED said.
AJL is the publisher of the National Herald news platform (newspaper and web portal), owned by Young Indian Private Limited.
Congress leaders Sonia and Rahul are majority shareholders of Young Indian with 38 per cent shares held by each one of them. They were questioned for hours by the ED in this case a few years ago.
The ED claimed its investigation has “conclusively” found that Young Indian, a private company “beneficially owned” by Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, “acquired” AJL properties worth Rs 2,000 crore for a mere Rs 50 lakh, significantly undervaluing its worth.
“Young Indian and AJL properties were used for generation of further proceeds of crime in the form of bogus donations to the tune of Rs 18 crore, bogus advance rent to the tune of Rs 38 crore and bogus advertisements of Rs 29 crore,” the ED has alleged.