New Delhi | Robert Vadra, the businessman brother-in-law of the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate for the second consecutive day on Wednesday for about five hours in a 2008 Haryana land deal-linked money laundering case.
The 56-year-old businessman termed the ED action a "political vendetta" and claimed the people of the country "do not trust the probe agencies".
He reached the ED office around 11 am accompanied by his wife Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, the Congress MP from Kerala's Wayanad. They hugged each other before Robert Vadra entered the office.
Vadra went home briefly for lunch and re-joined the questioning session. He finally left the ED office after 6 pm. Priyanka Gandhi stayed in the visitors' room of the agency's office 'Pravartan Bhawan' at the APJ Abdul Kalam Road throughout the grilling session.
He has been called again on Thursday for further questioning.
Sources said Vadra has been confronted with about a dozen questions during the around 10 hours he spent at the ED office over two days. His statement was being recorded by the federal probe agency under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
Vadra asserted that he has always cooperated with investigating agencies and has furnished a multitude of documents while saying that cases as old as 20 years need closure.
Speaking to PTI, Vadra claimed that he was being "targeted" by probe agencies as he is part of the Gandhi family and that things would have been different had he been part of the BJP.
The probe against Vadra is linked to a land deal in Haryana's Manesar-Shikohpur (now sector 83) in Gurugram. The deal of February 2008 was done by a company named Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd, where Vadra was a director earlier, as it purchased a 3.5 acre of land in Shikohpur from Onkareshwar Properties at a price of Rs 7.5 crore.
A Congress government led by Bhupinder Singh Hooda was in power at that time. Four years later, in September 2012, the company sold the land to realty major DLF for Rs 58 crore.
The land deal got embroiled in controversy in October 2012 after IAS officer Ashok Khemka, then posted as the director general of Land Consolidation and Land Records-cum-Inspector-General of Registration of Haryana, cancelled the mutation of this categorising the transaction as violative of state consolidation Act and some related procedures.
The BJP, which was in opposition then, had termed the case an instance of "corruption" in land deals and that of "nepotism", hinting at Vadra's kinship with the first family of the Congress party.
Haryana Police had filed an FIR to probe this deal in 2018.
Vadra has been questioned multiple times by the federal probe agency in two different money laundering cases earlier.
New Delhi | The Enforcement Directorate is expected to soon file chargesheets in the three separate money laundering cases against Robert Vadra that it has been investigating for years, sources said on Wednesday.
The 56-year-old businessman, the brother-in-law of the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi, was questioned by the federal probe agency on Tuesday and Wednesday in the 2008 Haryana land deal case.
It pertains to alleged financial irregularities in a deal struck for a plot in Shikohpur (Gurugram) in Haryana. He has been questioned by the ED in two other money laundering cases in the past.
Sources told PTI that the agency will soon file chargesheets in the three cases against Vadra before the respective special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) courts.
Once the chargesheets are filed, the agency will request the courts to take cognisance of the prosecution complaints and initiate trials, they said, adding some companies and individuals could also be named as accused and witnesses in these chargesheets.
Vadra, the husband of Congress MP from Wayanad Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.
One of the cases pertains to a money laundering probe against UK-based arms consultant Sanjay Bhandari and his purported links with Vadra. The 63-year-old Bhandari is stated to have fled to London in 2016 soon after the Income Tax department raided him in Delhi.
A UK court, early this month, refused the Indian government's application, seeking permission to appeal in Britain's Supreme Court against the discharge of Bhandari in an extradition case against him, virtually ruling out chances of his being brought to the country to face the law.
The ED had filed a chargesheet in this case in 2023, alleging that Bhandari "acquired" the 12-Bryanston Square house in London in 2009 and got it renovated "as per the directions of Robert Vadra and the funds for renovation were provided by Robert Vadra."
Vadra has denied owning any London property directly or indirectly. Terming these charges a "political witch hunt", he has claimed that he was being "hounded and harassed" to subserve political ends.
The third money laundering case in which Vadra is being investigated relates to a land deal in Bikaner. He and his mother Maureen were questioned in this case by the ED in the past.
The agency registered a criminal case in connection with the Bikaner land deal in 2015, taking cognisance of a clutch of FIRs and chargesheets filed by the Rajasthan police after the tehsildar of Bikaner complained about alleged forgery in the allotment of land in the area, considered sensitive due to its proximity to the India-Pakistan border.
Vadra, on Wednesday, deposed before the agency in Delhi for the second straight day to record his statement in the case of alleged irregularities in the 2008 land deal in Haryana's Shikohpur.
He told reporters that the case was borne out of "political vendetta" against him and his family as he claimed that the people of the country "do not trust the probe agencies."
Vadra said he has always cooperated with investigative agencies and has furnished thousands of pages of documents, stressing that there needs to be a closure in cases that are as old as 20 years.
