The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has issued fresh summons asking Congress president Sonia Gandhi to depose before it on July 21 for questioning in the National Herald newspaper-linked money-laundering case.
Gandhi was issued a second summons for June 23 by the agency, but the 75-year-old Congress leader could not keep the date as she was “strictly advised to rest at home following her hospitalisation on account of COVID-19 and a lung infection”.
Gandhi had sought postponing of the summons by four weeks and hence, she has been asked to depose before the agency on July 21. The Congress president was first issued the notice for appearance on June 8 but after she reported positive for Covid, the summons for June 23 was issued.
Her son and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi has been questioned by the agency in the case for over 50 hours in sessions spread across five days.
The move to question the Gandhis was initiated after the ED late last year lodged a fresh case under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), following a trial court here taking cognisance of an income-tax department probe against Young Indian on the basis of a private criminal complaint filed by BJP leader Subramanian Swamy in 2013.
Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are among the promoters and majority shareholders of Young Indian. Like her son, the Congress president too has 38 per cent shareholding in the company.
Swamy had accused the Gandhis and others of conspiring to cheat and misappropriate funds, with Young Indian paying only Rs 50 lakh to obtain the right to recover Rs 90.25 crore that Associated Journals Limited (AJL) owed to the Congress.
