According to the central agency, the “South Group” comprises arrested BRS leader K. Kavitha, YSRCP MP Magunta Sreenivasulu Reddy, his son Raghav Reddy and the director of Aurobindo Pharma, P. Sarath Reddy.
ED sources said Kejriwal not only demanded bribe but tweaked a Group of Ministers’ (GoM) report to favour this South Group, and also used Rs 45 crore given to the AAP in cash and through hawala in the 2022 Goa elections.
The sources added that the ED has “sufficient proof” and “statements of other accused” to establish that Kejriwal asked for Rs 100 crore from Kavitha in exchange for benefits in the liquor trade in Delhi.
Kejriwal was aware of “how undue favours were being extended to the licensees like waivers and reduction in the license fee, and the extension of the L-1 license (granted to business entities having wholesale distribution experience in liquor trade) in exchange for kickbacks”, according to the ED.
A Delhi court sent Kejriwal to six days’ ED custody Friday, a day after he was arrested by the agency following several hours of questioning at his residence.
AAP leaders have refuted the allegations against Kejriwal. Delhi cabinet minister Atishi said Kejriwal will not resign from his post as CM. On Saturday, senior AAP leaders including Punjab CM Bhagwant Mann, Atishi and other AAP leaders Gopal Rai, Saurabh Bhardwaj, Somnath Bharti and party workers protested Kejriwal’s arrest at Delhi’s Shaheedi Park.
Also Read: ‘Undue favours in exchange for kickbacks’ — ED arrests Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal in excise policy case’
The ‘tweaked’ GoM report
According to the ED, C. Arvind (then secretary of Manish Sisodia) told the agency in a statement that Sisodia had called him to the residence of Kejriwal and handed over a 30-page document which was a “draft GoM report”.
Sisodia is then said to have told Arvind that it was the base document on which the final GoM report was to be made.
In the document handed over, it was mentioned that the wholesale licence should be given to agents (private players) of manufacturers, one wholesale licensee could be a distributor for any number of manufacturers, and the wholesale profit margin was fixed at 12 percent. These points, the ED said, were never discussed at the GoM meetings and it was the first time that Kejriwal saw the points mentioned in the document handed over at his residence.
According to the ED, the said changes were made after consultation with the South Group to benefit them.
“Statement of K. Kavitha’s chartered accountant Buchi Babu revealed that her associate Arun Pillai was working with Vijay Nair on the policy formulation and he was offering provisions for favouring Kavitha,” an ED source said.
“This is further corroborated by WhatsApp messages retrieved from the mobile phone of Babu, which is evidence of the fact that Vijay Nair was proposing favours in the policy to the South Group,” the source said.
‘Demanded kickbacks’
The ED has also alleged that Kejriwal demanded kickbacks from the South Group in exchange of awarding favours to them in the formulation and implementation of the Excise Policy 2021-22.
According to the ED, Magunta Reddy, MP from Andhra Pradesh’s Ongole, told the agency that he approached Kejriwal with a business proposal after seeing an ad in the newspaper about Delhi privatising the liquor trade. During their meeting at the CM’s office in March 2021, Kejriwal told Reddy that Kavitha had also approached him and offered to pay Rs 100 crore to the AAP, it claimed.
Then, Kavitha called Magunta and fixed a meeting to discuss paying Rs 100 crore to Kejriwal, ED sources claimed.
Kavitha allegedly told Magunta that he should arrange for Rs 50 crore of the total sum. Buchi Babu contacted Magunta’s son Raghav the next day, an ED source said.
“(Raghav) said he could arrange Rs 30 crore. Finally, Rs 25 crore was paid in cash to Abhishek Boinpalli (a businessman) and Buchi on the instructions of Kavitha,” the source added.
According to this source, the statement of Raghav revealed he paid Rs 25 crore in cash to Boinpalli in line with an agreement between Kavitha, his father, and him.
This cash transfer, the ED source said, took place in two instalments, with Raghav’s staff Gopi delivering Rs 10 crore in cash to an address in Chennai that Buchi had shared on 28 March, 2021, and the remaining Rs 15 crore to an address shared by Boinpalli in June 2021.
Gopi, the source added, corroborated Raghav’s claims in his statement, saying he delivered cash on two occasions to one person on Raghav’s instructions.
The ED has also put on record a statement of a staff member of Kavitha who revealed he “collected two heavy bags containing cash from Dinesh Arora’s (businessman-turned-approver) office on Abhishek Boinpally’s directions and delivered it to a person named Vinod Chauhan”.
The ED source added that Vinod Chauhan transferred the money for the AAP election campaign in Goa through the “hawala route”.
The source further said that accused-turned-approver Aurobindo Pharma director Sarath Reddy told the agency that in March 2021, Arun Pillai, an associate of Kavitha, contacted him and informed him that there was a “new business opportunity in the Delhi liquor business and Kavitha was in discussion with Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia”.
Sarath Reddy also told the ED that through Vijay Nair, Kejriwal and Sisodia proposed to Kavitha that if she paid Rs 100 crore, they would “amend and implement the excise policy (in a way that is) beneficial to her”.
According to the ED source, after his discussion with Arun Pillai, Sarath Reddy met Kavitha in Hyderabad, and she told him she had discussed the matter with Magunta Reddy and that her team was already working in Delhi with Vijay Nair. “This team comprised Arun Pillai, Buchi Babu, and Abhishek Boinpalli,” the source said.
Kavitha also informed Sarath Reddy that Vijay Nair would handle all issues on behalf of Kejriwal and Sisodia in the matter, added the source.
Sarath Reddy said in his statement that Kavitha informed him about the Rs 100 crore for “favourable policy” and “other favours in the Delhi liquor business”.
“Sarath Reddy agreed to pay (a) part of Rs 100 crore to be paid to the AAP leaders when the business commences, since he didn’t have cash in hand at that time,” the ED source said.
‘Hawala transfers, cash transactions — money used for polls’
According to ED, going by the investigation done so far, the proceeds of crime of about Rs 45 crore, which was “part of the bribes received from the South Group”, was used in the election campaign of the AAP in Goa in 2021-22.
To support the claim, the ED has said that Dinesh Arora in his statement revealed that on the instructions of Vijay Nair, he coordinated hawala transfer of Rs 31 crore along with Boinpally and Rajesh Joshi, owner of Chariot Productions Media Pvt Ltd, which was engaged by the AAP for its election campaign in Goa.
According to the agency, on examination of the vendors of Chariot Productions engaged for outdoor campaigns, it was found that many of the vendors were made “part cash part bill” payments by Chariot Productions. One such vendor is Grace Advertising whose employee Islam Qazi has revealed in his statement that he raised invoice of “only partial amount payable as remaining part was paid to him in cash”.
The ED further said that Qazi got another vendor, Sparks Entertainment, engaged with Chariot Productions and while explaining the mode of payment, he “explicitly said that AAP payments are going to be part bill part cash”.
The ED has claimed that Qazi revealed he was given Rs 6.29 lakh payment via hawala and he had got it collected from a hawala operator in Malad, Mumbai.
“On further investigation, it was found that Anand Vyas and Anil Patel were the Angadiyas (hawala operators) in Mumbai who gave Rs 4.25 lakh cash and Rs 2.45 lakh cash, respectively, to Islam Qazi,” the ED source said.
The ED has claimed that a total of Rs 45 crore was transferred through hawala to Goa for the elections.
“We have IT records and call detail records to establish that huge sums of money were sent to Goa, including to vendors who were made cash payments,” the source said.
According to the ED, statements of several hawala dealers revealed that the money which was transferred to Goa came from four routes, mostly through hawala channels.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
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