Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, on Thursday, called the Enforcement Directorate (ED) action against him and his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi ‘an intimidation attempt’.
While speaking to the media in the national capital, Rahul Gandhi said, “You are talking about National Herald, it’s an intimidation attempt. They think they will be able to silence us with a little pressure…We won’t be intimidated. We are not scared of Narendra Modi. They can do whatever they want…”
On the barricading issue, he said “truth cannot be barricaded”, and added his party will continue to protest.
The former Congress chief said the BJP government thinks its can “silence us by putting some pressure on us”.
“But we will not be silenced,” he said. “What Narendra Modi and Amit Shah are doing in this country and against democracy, we will stand against it whatever they may do. It does not matter.”
#WATCH | Delhi: Congress MP Rahul Gandhi says, “You are talking about National Herald, it’s an intimidation attempt. They think they will be able to silence us with a little pressure…We won’t be intimidated. We are not scared of Narendra Modi. They can do whatever they want…” pic.twitter.com/sC5Zgn3Vz3
— ANI (@ANI) August 4, 2022
ED raids 11 locations including National Herald headquarters
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday raided the head office of the Congress party-owned National Herald newspaper and 11 other locations as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation.
The searches were carried out under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to “gather 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 agency said.
ED also questioned Sonia Gandhi for more than 11 hours, spread over three rounds in July, and Rahul Gandhi for five days, at intervals, clocking over 50 hours in June.
Senior Congress politicians like Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal were also questioned by the ED in April.
The Congress party has said it gave a Rs 90 crore loan to an ailing Associated Journals Ltd (AJL), which published National Herald, between 2001-02 and 2010-11. Later, in 2011, the shares of AJL were allotted to Young Indian and this debt was converted into equity and the loan was extinguished in the books of the AJL, the agency said.
The ED claims these transactions attract anti-money laundering charges as a complex web of transactions and routing of funds were undertaken by the party and its leaders to acquire AJL’s assets worth multiple crores of rupees.
