Visuals show ED and security officials outside Sanjay Singh’s Delhi house.
New Delhi:
A search is underway at Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Sanjay Singh’s house in a money laundering case linked to the Delhi liquor policy case. Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials reached the Rajya Sabha MP’s Delhi house early morning.
Mr Singh is the latest AAP leader to be under the central agencies’ scanner in the liquor policy case after Manish Sisodia, a former deputy chief minister in the AAP government in Delhi, was arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in February.
The excise policy case was filed in connection with the Delhi government’s liquor policy of 2021 that was later scrapped. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was also questioned for nearly nine hours in the same case in April.
Businessman Dinesh Arora, one of the approvers in the case, had claimed that Mr Singh introduced him to Mr Sisodia, the then excise minister. But he was never named as an accused by the ED, which has filed three chargesheets in the case. He was neither summoned nor was his statement recorded in this connection, though the contents of the chargesheets made references to him.
The CBI contends that liquor companies were involved in framing the excise policy, which would have led to a 12 per cent profit for the firms. The agency alleged that a liquor lobby it dubbed the “South Group” had paid kickbacks for it. Of the proposed 12 per cent profit, six per cent was routed to public servants through middlemen, the agency claimed.
The ED is probing into the alleged laundering of the kickbacks.
After the policy was scrapped, the BJP said the Delhi government went back to the old liquor policy to cover up the corruption. Mr Sisodia had denied any wrongdoing and his party said his arrest was an “attack on the Delhi model of governance”.
