Other empirebears April 15, 2022 0 Comments

Aditya Khanna bows to ED pressure

NEW DELHI: Bowing to pressure from the Enforcement Directorate, Aditya Khanna, a kin of former external affairs minister K Natwar Singh, on Monday returned from London and was immediately whisked away by ED officials for questioning in connection with the oil-for-food scam.

Khanna arrived at the Indira Gandhi International Airport here by a Virgin Atlantic flight where the Enforcement Directorate sleuths, who apparently had prior knowledge of his return, were waiting for him.

Khanna, a non-resident Indian who runs a restaurant in London, was immediately taken away by the ED officials for questioning in connection with the alleged payments he received from Masefields, which got contracts in the scam.

The ED alleged that the funds received from Masefields in his bank account in London were later transferred to a bank in Delhi, from where it was allegedly given to Indian beneficiaries. The probe agency is trying to ascertain from Khanna about these transactions, particularly the end users of the funds.

The ED is also trying to find out from him about some documents procured by the probe agency from a foreign destination that showed a connection between Masefield and Hamdan Exports, owned by his partner Andleep Sehghal.

Sehghal was questioned about the documents last Sunday.

Khanna had slipped to United Kingdom earlier this month despite a letter of cancellation issued against his passport.

His father, Vipin Khanna, was detained on April 9 while he was trying to leave for UK and told by the ED that he could not leave until Aditya returned from abroad.

ED had sought revocation of the passport on the basis of progress made in its probe into the dealings of Indians with the ousted Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq in the oil-for-food
programme under the aegis of the United Nations between 1996 and 2003.

Khanna’s arrival would also help the ED in finalising the “showcause” notice (a virtual chargesheet under FEMA) against some people that was likely to include the name of Natwar Singh as well. Singh has, however, denied all allegations.

The ED had roped in the help of the income tax department to give details of the tax returns filed by Aditya, his father Vipin and his brother Arvind.

The money that the ED was trying to trace related to events of five years ago and it would take sometime to locate them from such huge transactions that had taken place over this period of time, the sources said.

The ED investigating the Indian angle of Iraq’s oil-for-food scam, as brought out by Volcker Committee, has questioned several people, including Natwar, Jagat, Sehgal and Aneil Matherani, India’s former envoy to Croatia, several times as part of their investigations.

The Enforcement Directorate recently got a shot in its arm when the Delhi High Court upheld the decision of the ED of revoking passports of various people, including Jagat Singh, son of Natwar Singh.