ED records Robert Vadra's statement in land deal case; summons again April 16

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday recorded the statement of Robert Vadra, businessman and brother-in-law of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, for about five hours in a 2008 Haryana land deal-linked money laundering case, official sources said.

He has been asked to depose again on Wednesday for continuing the grilling session, the sources said.

Terming the agency's move to summon him as "political vendetta", Vadra said he has spent hours with the ED earlier during questioning (in separate money laundering cases), sharing thousands of pages but still the agency has been raking up cases against him.

The 56-year-old walked down from his residence at Sujan Singh Park in central Delhi to the ED headquarters on APJ Abdul Kalam Road, a two-km stretch. He entered the ED office at 11 am along with his lawyer while his security team stayed out.

Speaking to reporters on the way to the ED office, he alleged, "This is nothing but political vendetta. Whenever I speak for minorities they try to stop me, crush us... they tried to stop Rahul (Gandhi) in Parliament too. This is misuse of agencies and this is political vendetta,", adding "I will cooperate with them like in the past." Sources said the ED recorded his statement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) for about two hours.

After coming out of the ED office for lunch around 1:30 pm, Vadra told reporters that while he was ready to cooperate with the investigation there needed to be a closure.

"How can you be talking about something that happened in 2007?" he asked.

He left the ED office around 6:30 PM.

He was first summoned in this case on April 8 but he did not depose and sought a fresh date, the sources said.

The probe against Vadra, whose wife Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is the Congress MP from Kerala's Wayanad, is linked to a land deal in Haryana's Manesar-Shikohpur (now sector 83) in Gurugram.

The land deal of February 2008 was done by a company named Skylight Hospitality Pvt Ltd, where Vadra was a director earlier, as it purchased a 3.5 acre land in Shikohpur from a firm named Onkareshwar Properties at a price of Rs 7.5 crore. A Congress government led by chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was in power that time.

Four years later, in September, 2012, the company sold this 3.53 acre land to realty major DLF for Rs 58 crore.

The land deal got into controversy in October, 2012 after IAS officer Ashok Khemka, then posted as the director general of Land Consolidation and Land Records-cum- Inspector-General of Registration of Haryana, cancelled the mutation of this categorising the transaction as violative of state consolidation Act and some related procedures.

The opposition Haryana BJP then had called this case an instance of "corruption" in land deals and that of "nepotism" hinting at Vadra's kinship with the first family of the Congress party.

Haryana Police had filed an FIR to probe this deal in 2018.

Vadra has been questioned multiple times by the federal probe agency in two different money laundering cases.

The ED had filed a charge sheet in December 2023 against UAE-based NRI businessman C C Thampi, who is allegedly linked to Vadra, and Sumit Chadha, a relative of UK-based arms consultant Sanjay Bhandari, saying it was investigating the purchase of three plots of land in Haryana during 2005-06 by Vadra from a real estate agent along with a land deal made by his wife Priyanka.

Neither Vadra or Priyanka Gandhi were named as accused in the charge sheet.

Thampi, the ED had said, had purchased about 486 acres of land between 2005 and 2008 in Amirpur village in Faridabad in Haryana through H L Pahwa, a Delhi-NCR based real estate agent.

"It is imperative to mention that Robert Vadra also purchased three pieces of land measuring 334 kanals (40.08 acres) in Amirpur from H L Pahwa from 2005-2006 and sold the same land to H L Pahwa in December 2010," it said in the charge sheet.

"Further, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra wife of Robert Vadra also purchased agricultural land measuring 40 kanal (05 acres) in village Amirpur, district Faridabad, Haryana, from H L Pahwa in April 2006 and sold the same land to H L Pahwa in February 2010," the ED stated.

It said that "Pahwa was receiving cash out of the books for the purpose of acquisition of land." "It was also noticed that Robert Vadra did not pay the entire consideration to Pahwa. The investigation in this regard is still ongoing," the ED had said.