The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday issued a fresh notice to a firm linked to Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi, as part of its investigations into an alleged land
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday issued a fresh notice to a firm linked to Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress president Mrs Sonia Gandhi, as part of its investigations into an alleged land scam in the Bikaner district of Rajasthan.
Sources in the ED said that the firm, Ms Skylight Hospitality, had been given two weeks’ time to furnish financial statements and other documents to the Investigating Officer (IO) of the case.
Sources further said that the summons for production of documents was issued for the second time as the agency had earlier dismissed as “unauthorised” the appearance of a lawyer in response to the notices first sent to the firm in June.
“The notice has been sent after the ED had conducted extensive searches, in this case, in Bikaner district, and other places last month, and had claimed to have seized a number of documents. Notice has been issued to the firm under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). The agency is likely to issue summons to a number of other people and entities involved in the case in the near future,” sources said. Last week, a lawyer had made an appearance before the ED in response to the first notice sent in the case, but it was dismissed by the probe agency as “unauthorised” as he was neither carrying any relevant papers nor an authorisation letter from the firm about him being their representative, they added.
The ED registered a money laundering case against certain real estate developers and Rajasthan government officials to probe the Bikaner land scam.
The agency picked up the case based on 18 FIRs filed by the state police in August last year after the local tehsildar had made a complaint.
A criminal case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act was registered by the ED. The ED has not mentioned the name of Vadra or any company linked to him in the FIR, but it named some state government officials and some of the “land mafia”.
The Rajasthan government had, in January 2015, cancelled the mutation (transfer of land) of 374.44 hectares of land after the land department claimed to have found that the allotments were made in the names of “illegal private persons”.
