Actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was questioned by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in New Delhi for more than five hours in connection with alleged forex violations related to the ‘Panama Papers’.
Aishwarya was being questioned and her statement was being recorded under the provisions of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA). She has joined the investigation about 2 p.m. and thereafter left the ED’s Jamnagar House. Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya’s husband, taped his testimony around a month ago.
However, as of now, there is no clear statement from the officials if the actor will be summoned again. The ED has filed a FEMA case and has twice requested that Aishwarya join the investigation. On November 9th, the most recent summons was issued under Section 37 of the FEMA.
As per the source, Aishwarya was asked as many as 50 questions regarding a firm reportedly incorporated by her father-in-law Amitabh Bachchan. She was first the director of the firm and then became a shareholder. Sources said, Abhishek Bachchan has also been examined by the ED in the past in another instance linked to the offshore leaks case, sources said.
This was the third time that the actress was summoned. However, she didn’t join the probe on the earlier occasions.”We had summoned her for December 20. Abiding by the third summon, she joined the probe,” said an ED official.
Celebrities, businessmen and famous personalities from several countries including India were named in the papers who were accused of money laundering. It had around 500 Indian names including Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Ajay Devgun, Vijay Mallya, Harish Salve. Most wanted underworld don Iqbal Mirchi’s name was also mentioned in the papers.
This matter reached the Supreme Court and the Centre formed a multi-agency group (MAG) under the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairman for the Panama Papers case. The MAG consists of officials from the ED, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU).
The ED has been probing the case linked to the Bachchans since 2016-17. It had issued notices to the Bachchan family asking them to explain their foreign remittances since 2004 under the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) and regulated under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
As per Panama Papers, Amic Partners was a corporation founded in the British Virgin Islands in 2004. Later, in May 2005, the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca appointed four family members of Aishwarya Rai to the board of directors of this corporation.
The government had recently said that “total undisclosed credits of Rs 20,353 crore” have been detected with respect to 930 India-linked entities in the Panama and Paradise Paper Leaks, as of 1 October 2021.
