New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate has issued summons to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal for the eighth time for questioning in the excise policy-linked money laundering case, official sources said on Tuesday.
Kejriwal, the national convenor of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has now been asked to depose at the agency’s headquarters here on March 4, they said.
Kejriwal on Monday skipped the seventh summons issued to him in the case, saying he would appear before the agency if a court ordered him to do so.
A city court, approached by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) over Kejriwal skipping its summonses, has listed this matter for further hearing on March 16.
The ED, while issuing the eighth summons, rejected the contention that a fresh notice for Kejriwal’s attendance was wrong as the matter was sub-judice.
The agency believes that the local court has prima facie held Kejriwal guilty of “disobeying” the earlier notices issued to him in this case, warranting the eighth summons.
Kejriwal’s name has been mentioned multiple times in the charge sheets filed by the ED in the case. The agency has said that the accused were in touch with him regarding the preparation of the now-scrapped Delhi Excise Policy 2021-22.
Kejriwal and his party have alleged that the summonses issued by the ED were “illegal”.
“They want us to break the alliance. Their message basically is that we should quit the alliance,” he said, claiming there were informal messages to that effect from different quarters.
AAP leaders Manish Sisodia and Sanjay Singh apart from communications in-charge of the party Vijay Nair have been arrested in this case by the ED till now.
The ED had claimed in its charge sheet that the AAP used “proceeds of crime” to the tune of about Rs 45 crore in its Goa election campaign.
The agency is also expected to file a fresh supplementary charge sheet in the case and may name the AAP as a “beneficiary” of the alleged kickbacks that were generated through the excise policy.
It is alleged that the Delhi government’s excise policy for 2021-22 to grant licences to liquor traders allowed cartelisation and favoured certain dealers who had allegedly paid bribes for it, a charge repeatedly refuted by the AAP.
The policy was subsequently scrapped and Delhi Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena recommended a CBI probe following which the ED registered a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
