Scam in Delhi Jal Board, AAP used money for elections: ED

The Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday alleged that bribe money generated from corruption in a Delhi Jal Board (DJB) contract was "passed on" as election funds to the Aam Aadmi Party that rules the national capital.

"Incriminating" documents and digital evidence apart from valuables of Rs 1.97 crore and foreign currency worth Rs 4 lakh were seized during the raids conducted in this case on Tuesday in Delhi, Varanasi and Chandigarh, the central agency said in a statement.

However, the statement did not specify what was seized from where.

The agency had raided the premises of Bibhav Kumar, personal assistant to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, AAP Rajya Sabha MP N D Gupta, former DJB member Shalabh Kumar, chartered accountant Pankaj Mangal and some others as part of this ongoing money laundering investigation.

A CBI FIR, which alleges that former chief engineer of DJB Jagdish Kumar Arora awarded a contract to NKG Infrastructure Ltd. for a total cost of Rs 38 crore despite the fact that the company "did not meet" the technical eligibility criteria, is the basis of the ED case.

The ED arrested Arora and a contractor named Anil Kumar Aggarwal in this case on January 31. They are in its custody till February 10.

NKG Infrastructure obtained the bid by submitting "forged" documents and Arora "was aware of the fact that the company does not meet the technical eligibility", the agency claimed.

The ED alleged that Arora "received" bribe in cash and in bank accounts after awarding the contract to NKG Infrastructure and that he "passed on" this money to various persons managing the affairs at DJB including "persons connected with AAP".

"Bribe amounts were also passed on as election funds to AAP," it claimed.

This is the second case where the federal agency has charged the AAP with taking kickbacks. It has claimed that bribe money from the scrapped Delhi excise policy was used by the Arvind Kejriwal-led party for campaigning in Goa assembly elections.

The agency said that the DJB contract was awarded at "highly inflated rates" so that the bribes could be collected from the contractors.

"As against the contract value of Rs 38 crore, only about Rs 17 crore was spent towards the contract and the remaining amounts were siphoned off in guise of various fake expenses. Such fake expenses were booked for bribes and election funds," the ED claimed.

Meanwhile, Delhi minister Atishi claimed in a press briefing early in the day that the officials of the agency just sat in the living room of Bibhav Kumar and took with them only two Gmail account downloads and three family phones.

"You will be surprised to hear that the ED officers who came for the raids did not carry out any searches. They did not find any papers or made any inquiries or file any paperwork to tell in connection with which case they had come," she told reporters.

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