The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Friday filed a fresh charge sheet in the Delhi excise policy-linked money laundering case naming Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader K Kavitha and four others as accused, official sources said.
The sources said the nearly 200-page prosecution complaint (charge sheet) along with annexures was filed under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) at the Rouse Avenue court.
Kavitha, an MLC of the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) party, three employees of a company that handled Aam Aadmi Party’s Goa campaign (Chariot Productions Media Pvt Ltd) — Damodar Sharma, Prince Kumar and Chanpreet Singh — besides a former employee of India Ahead News Channel Arvind Singh have been named as accused in the latest charge sheet, they said.
Kaveri Baweja, the special judge for ED and CBI cases, is likely to take up the charge sheet for cognisance on May 13. A similar complaint against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is expected to be filed next week.
The federal agency had arrested 46-year-old Kavitha, the daughter of former Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao, from her Banjara hills residence in Hyderabad on March 15.
Chanpreet was arrested on April 15 and it was alleged by the agency that he “managed” cash funds for AAP’s 2022 Goa assembly campaign.
Arvind Singh, the commercial head and production controller of India Ahead News, was arrested by the CBI in this case in May last year for alleged transfer of these funds that have been called “kickbacks” of this “scam”.
This is the seventh charge sheet filed by the ED in this case in which it has arrested 18 people so far including Kejriwal, who was given interim bail by the Supreme Court on Friday.
“K Kavitha orchestrated a deal with Arvind Kejriwal, then deputy chief minister and minister of excise Manish Sisodia, wherein she along with other members of the South Group paid them kickbacks through a string of intermediaries and middlemen,” the ED had claimed.
It further alleged Kavitha was “involved” in various activities relating to proceeds of crime to the tune of at least Rs 292.8 crore.
The ED filed its money laundering case on August 22, 2022, taking cognisance of the CBI FIR that was lodged on August 17, 2022.
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