New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate has asked Congress president Sonia Gandhi to record her statement with the agency sometime in late July after it accepted her plea to postpone her deposition in a money-laundering case linked to the National Herald newspaper, officials said on Thursday.
She was issued a second summons for June 23 by the agency but the 75-year-old Congress leader could not keep the date as she “has been strictly advised to rest at home following her hospitalization on account of Covid-19, and lung infection”.
The Congress president was on Monday discharged from a private Delhi hospital where she was admitted for coronavirus-related complications. She was admitted to the hospital on June 12, days after she tested positive for Covid-19 on June 2. Her son and Congress MP Rahul Gandhi has been questioned by the agency in the same case for about 54 hours over five days.
The probe relates to alleged financial irregularities in the Congress-promoted Young Indian Private Limited, which owns the National Herald newspaper.
The move to question the Gandhis was initiated after the ED recently registered a fresh case under the criminal provisions of the PMLA after a trial court here took cognizance of an Income Tax department probe against Young Indian based on a private criminal complaint filed by BJP MP Subramanian Swamy in 2013.
Sonia and Rahul Gandhi are among the promoters and majority shareholders of Young Indian. Like her son, the Congress president too has 38 percent shareholding.
