New Delhi: Karnataka Congress president DK Shivakumar appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in the National Herald money laundering case, officials said. The state president has agreed to submit the documents sought from him by the ED in connection with a probe related to their financial contribution to Young India Private Limited.
Before entering to face the questions by the agency office at APJ Abdul Kalam Road, spoke with the reporters, stating himself as "law-abiding citizen" and hence he was attending the interrogations before the agency, though he didn't know why he was being called.
"I am a law-abiding citizen...I have respect for the law...I had requested for a time (deferring October 7 summons) but they said no, you have to come. I have come today...let me see, let me hear them, let me answer whatever I know...," he said.
The Karnataka senior Congress leader added that he had arrived in Delhi after leaving the Bharat Jodo Yatra, which passed through his own state. Shivakumar. On Thursday, he took part in the Yatra with interim president of Congress Sonia Gandhi and general secretary Rahul Gandhi.
Before this, Shivakumar had also faced the ED on September 19 in the national capital, and he had answered the probe agency in another money laundering case regarding alleged possession of disproportionate properties.
The most recent round of investigation was held against Shivakumar and his MP brother DK Suresh donating an unstated amount of fund to Young Indian, the parent company of the National Herald. The sources revealed to the Press Trust of India that ED wants details of these proceedings.
The agency has already conducted an investigation into similar types of money transfers carried out by Telangana Congress Working President J Geeta Reddy and a few other party leaders.
The Enforcement Directorate has also questioned Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, and other senior Congress leaders like Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal in the National Herald money laundering case.
Shivakumar first got into ED questioning after getting arrested on September 3, 2019. After following multiple rounds of questioning in a case that came out against him from an income tax department action, he got bail from the Delhi High Court in this case in October that year.
In May 2022, the agency filed a charge sheet against Shivkumar and others associated with him in this case.
After taking cognisance of a charge sheet (prosecution complaint) filed by the Income Tax Department, the case was registered against them in 2018 as a special court in Bengaluru on an allegation of alleged tax evasion and hawala transactions valued at crores.
The Income Tax department has charged Shivakumar, the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee chief, and those linked up with him for transporting huge amounts of funds on a regular basis via 'hawala' channels with the help of three others.
The Kanakapura MLA helped to assure the safe stay of Gujarat Congress MLAs in a Karnataka resort during the Rajya Sabha polls in 2017 amid allegations that the BJP was trying to poach them.
Political secretary of then Congress president Sonia Gandhi's, late Ahmed Patel, had constituted the Rajya Sabha election from Gujarat in 2017 and Shivakumar had then hosted 44 Gujarat Congress MLAs at the resort to keep the group together
