K Kavitha had earlier claimed that she had done nothing wrong.
New Delhi:
The Enforcement Directorate alleged that BRS leader K Kavitha and a few others “conspired” with senior AAP leaders including Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia to inflate the now-defunct Delhi GST policy by paying Rs 100 crore to the party ruling Delhi. gain benefits. on Monday.
Kavitha, 46, the MLC daughter of former Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao, was arrested by federal agencies from her home in Hyderabad last week and will be detained till March 23.
The probe found that Kavitha and others “conspired with senior AAP leaders such as Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia to influence the formulation of Delhi’s excise tax policy,” the education ministry said in a statement. and gain benefits from implementation”. “In exchange for these benefits, she was involved in paying Rs 100 crore to the AAP leader,” the agency said.
The report said that due to “corruption and conspiracy” in the formulation and implementation of the Delhi GST policy for 2021-22, the AAP continued to generate illicit funds in the form of kickbacks from wholesalers.
“Kavisha and her associates will recover the proceeds of crime advanced to AAP and further derive profits/proceeds of crime from the entire conspiracy,” the agency told Special Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) court that she was “one of the masterminds, main conspirator and beneficiary of the Delhi excise policy scam”.
Kavitha had earlier claimed that she had done nothing wrong and alleged that the Center was “taking advantage” of the education ministry as the BJP could not “backdoor” Telangana.
The Aam Aadmi Party has accused the BJP of using ED and CBI as “goons” to eliminate political opponents.
The agency said since the case was registered in 2022, it has conducted searches at 245 locations across the country and arrested 15 people, including former Delhi deputy prime minister and AAP leader Manish Sisodhi Manish Sisodia, AAP leader Sanjay Singh and some liquor personalities. merchant.
The company has so far filed a total of six chargesheets in the case and seized assets worth over Rs 128 crore.
The Education Ministry and the Confederation of Indian Industry have claimed that the Delhi government’s excise policy on issuing licenses to liquor traders allowed cartelization and benefited certain dealers who allegedly paid bribes for it, an allegation strongly criticized by Australia’s AP refute.
The policy was subsequently repealed and Delhi Lieutenant Governor VK Saxena recommended a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into irregularities in its formulation and implementation. Subsequently, the ED registered a case under PMLA.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
