ED summons to Sonia & Rahul Gandhi reeks of vendetta, fear: Congress

The party said the case of money laundering was “weird” as there was no money involved. It argued that the charges were “hollow … more hollow than a pack of cards”. At a press conference with the party’s communications department head Randeep Singh Surjewala, Singhvi said, “We will face them. We are not a bit scared or overawed or intimidated by such cheap tactics.”

He went on to add, “The fake issue of AJL, Associated Journals, is an attempt by the BJP’s propaganda machinery to deviate, diverge and digress the attention of citizens from the multifarious, vital issues of inflation, falling GDP and social unrest, social divisiveness in the country. This is truly a very weird case. A money laundering case on which summons are issued with no money involved. I have yet to hear of this absolute acrobatics in the imagination of creating a summons in respect of an allegation of money laundering where no money is involved. It reeks of vendetta, of pettiness, of fear, of political cheapness.”

The Congress leader claimed the central agency’s action was “part of a larger disease”. He added, “A disease which will consume the ruling party ultimately. The disease is one of attacking every political party purely on vendetta terms. From Kashmir to Kanyakumari … from Farooq Abdullah to DMK functionaries — from Gujarat to West Bengal, from Jignesh Mewani to Mamata Banerjee and her family, the BJP has brought or tried to bring … every political opponent under the net of puppet agencies like CBI, ED, IT etc … We will face them. We are not a bit scared or overawed or intimidated by such cheap tactics.”

Elaborating on the case, Singhvi said, “The CBI allegations in this regard or the investigative process in this regard start with a well-known baiter of the Congress party, Dr Subramanian Swamy, and we are taken back to 2014-15 period. From 2014 to ’15, the ED had not thought if fit till today because they know they have no material to seek summons about the Congress president or the former Congress president. Today, on the same facts, exactly the same alleged acts and omissions, not a comma, a full stop is changed in May 2022, (and) you are issued summons to divert attention on the same facts by the ED.”

Singhvi said that “whosoever is present in the country, and certainly the Congress president, will go”. He added, “If there is some small accommodation or some time required for somebody who is not here, that time will be sought. We will write a letter…we will see the dates…we are fully complying with everything.”

With regard to the case, he said AJL had come under financial stress over the decades, following which the Congress stepped in and gave “Rs 90 odd crores” as financial support over a period of time.

“So AJL became an indebted company, a company with debt. AJL did what every company in India does, what every company abroad does. What is known as the basics of corporate activity. It converted its debt into equity. So this debt of 90 crores was assigned to a new company. It is called Young India, so that the books of AJL become debt-free. Young India, in turn, which received the debt was a newly created company under a special provision of the Companies Act — Section 25 — which has very two vital conditions. It has to be a not for profit company by definition, by statute and by law and no dividend can be given to its shareholders or directors…So you cannot take a penny.”

The Congress leader added, “The third important facet is that AJL continues to hold all the properties it was holding earlier. It continues to be the owner of the National Herald and its printer and publisher. The only change is that Young India is holding the shareholding of AJL. So there is no transfer of property. So where is the money laundering? Where does it arise? Where is the money? So there is no money, no transfer of property. There is no transfer of money. Yet a charge of money laundering is done. Young India cannot use money in any form which it gets because it can neither pay dividend nor accumulate profit by which it can give out the money.”

The Congress leader said this was why “better minds, objective minds, non-malevolent, non-malafide minds closed this case in file”.

“But as malafide as this government is … they sack the head of the ED at that time, they get a new opinion and they try to reopen, in respect of which seven years later today they are summoning Congress president Sonia Gandhi and former Congress president Rahul Gandhi,” Singhvi added.