ED raids National Herald headquarters, 11 more places in Delhi

The action is being undertaken in light of fresh evidence obtained by the ED after the latest questioning of various people

A week after questioning Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted searches at the head office of the Congress-owned National Herald in the national capital and 11 other locations in connection with an ongoing money laundering investigation.

Officials said the searches under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) were aimed at "gathering additional evidence with regard to the trail of funds and they are against those entities who were involved in the National Herald-linked transactions." The premises of an alleged shell (dummy) company in Kolkata involved under scanner in the case was also searched.

As Congress workers protested outside the 'Herald House' at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg near ITO in central Delhi, officials said the action was taken after new evidence emerged following the questioning of several people, including Sonia, former Congress president Rahul Gandhi, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Mallijarjun Kharge and Congress Treasurer Pawan Bansal in the past four months.

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Sonia was questioned for over 11 hours in three days last month while Rahul was quizzed for over 50 hours in five days in June. Kharge and Bansal were questioned in April.

Congress questioned the searches with General Secretary (Communications) Jairam Ramesh tweeting, "the raids on Herald House, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg are a part of the continued attack against India’s principal opposition — Indian National Congress. We strongly condemn this vendetta politics against those who speak up against the Modi government. You cannot silence us!"

Union Minister and BJP MP Rajiv Chandrasekhar countered the Congress saying, "I am anticipating a crowd once again by Congress, in another attempt to intimidate ED. They've had an SoP to intimidate law enforcement officials whenever interrogated. Mamata Banerjee also invested in this strategy."

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According to the Congress, it gave a Rs 90 crore loan to Associated Journals Ltd, which runs National Herald, between 2001-02 and 2010-11 and later, in 2011, the shares of AJL were allotted to Young Indian as part of debt restructuring.

The ED is of the view that these transactions attract anti-money laundering charges as a complex web of transactions and routing of funds were undertaken by the Congress and its leaders to acquire AJL's assets worth multiple crores of rupees.

Sonia and Rahul told the ED that no personal assets were created in the deal as Young Indian is a "not-for-profit" company formed under Section 25 of the Companies Act. They also highlighted that the AJL continues to own the assets and the Young Indian neither owns nor controls the properties.