New Delhi: Robert Vadra, the brother-in-law of Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, on Friday moved a Delhi court seeking anticipatory bail in a money laundering case lodged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).
A lawyer from the prosecution team confirmed that Vadra has sought anticipatory bail in the case in which his close aide Manoj Arora was granted interim protection from arrest till February 6 by the court.
The case relates to allegations of money laundering in the purchase of a London-based property — located at 12, Bryanston Square — worth 1.9 million pou-nds, which is allegedly owned by Mr Vadra.
Mr Vadra’s anticipatory bail application is likely to be heard by the court on Saturday. On January 19, the ED had told the court that Arora was cooperating in the probe.
Mr Arora had earlier alleged before the court that the case was foisted on him by the NDA government out of “political vendetta”.
However, the ED had refuted the allegations, asking that “should no authority investigate any political bigwig because that will be called a political vendetta?”
The agency had told the court that it lodged the money laundering case against Arora after his role came up during the probe of another case by the Income Tax Department under the newly-enacted Black Money Act and tax law against absconding arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari.
It had alleged that the London-based property was bought by Mr Bhandari for 1.9 million pounds and sold in 2010 for the same amount despite incurring additional expenses of approximately 65,900 pounds on its renovation.
“This gives credence to the fact that Mr Bhandari was not the actual owner of the property but it was beneficially owned by Mr Vadra who was incurring expenditure on the renovation of this property,” the ED had told the court.
