New Delhi: The Bhartiya Janta Party received a large donation from RKW Developers Ltd, that is now being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for facilitating “terror funding,” financial declarations by the BJP party, reveals.
According to a report in The Wire, RKW Developers Ltd, is currently at the heart of a probe by the ED for carrying out transactions with and buying properties from the late Iqbal Memon alias Iqbal Mirchi – an accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts and a close aide of mafia boss Dawood Ibrahim – gave money to the ruling party, according to the BJP’s filings with the Election Commission.
In 2014-15, RKW, which is associated with the beleaguered Dewan Housing Finance Limited, gave Rs 10 crore to the party. This was also pointed out by CobraPost in January 2019.
While political parties regularly receive large sums of money from various companies, no individual company has donated an amount as huge as RKW Developers.
With the ongoing controversy over electoral bonds where despite Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) repeated warnings on the electoral bond scheme in bearer form having the potential to increase black money circulation, money laundering, cross-border counterfeiting and forgery were ignored by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government, as it was more keen on protecting the identity of donors.
The Wire has reported that Ranjeet Bindra, a former director in the company, has been arrested by the ED for allegedly facilitating deals on behalf of the underworld. News reports have quoted ED sources describing Bindra as an “agent” who “brokered” the deal between Mirchi and the firms.
Also, a company accused by the ED of buying Mirchi’s properties, Sunblink Real Estate, is linked, via a common directorship, to another company that also made a Rs 2 crore donation to the BJP.
Mehul Anil Bavishi, a director on Sunblink, is also a director in a company called Skill Realtors Private Limited. Filings made to the EC show that the BJP received Rs 2 crore from Skill Realtors in 2014-15..
The ED alleges that RKW Developers facilitated the sale of Mirchi’s properties and Bindra had allegedly taken a commission of Rs 30 crore. The agency had also questioned actor Shilpa Shetty’s husband Raj Kundra for dealings with RKW Developers. Shetty had been a director in a firm, Essential Hospitality, which had transactions with RKW Developers.
