CBI not probing NDTV’s $50m laundering: Swamy to PM

Bharatiya Janata Party leader Subramanian Swamy has complained to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the Central Bureau of Investigation is not doing its statutory duty to follow the Enforcement Directorate’s finding of NDTV’s money laundering of $50 million in the Aircel Maxis scam charge-sheet.

In a letter writer to Modi on Wednesday, Swamy has refreshed his campaign against officials in the Finance Ministry. In the letter, he wrote, “Mr. P Chidambaram’s loyal appointees in the Finance Ministry, made when he was FM, are now actively trying to dilute the gravity by registering the cases under FEMA to bypass criminality and providing an escape route of paying fines only.”

He also dragged Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan into the row by alleging that the later “had tried to save NDTV.”

According to ED’s charge-sheet, NDTV received $50 million from Maxis subsidiary Astro-All Asia Networks during the scam in the period. Incidentally, Astro-AAN is also charged as accused by the CBI and the ED for providing bribe to Sun TV, Swamy said. “Therefore, CBI statutorily under the Prevention of Corruption Act is bound to act on this issue of money transfer to NDTV.”

The TV channel’s top people should therefore be questioned by the CBI to find on whose behest the money came to them in the Aircel-Maxis deal, Swamy said. The directors of the London company known as NDTV Networks Plc (NNPLC) are Prannoy Roy, Radhika Roy, Barkha Dutt, Vikram Chandra, Sonia Singh, and Suparna Singh.