ED raids National Herald office, other locations

New Delhi: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday raided the head office of the Congress party-owned National Herald newspaper here and 11 other locations as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation, officials said, a week after it questioned Congress chief Sonia Gandhi.

The searches are being carried out under the criminal sections of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) to "gather additional evidence with regard to the trail of funds and they are against those entities who were involved in the National Herald-linked transactions", they said.

The action is being undertaken in light of fresh evidence obtained by the ED after the latest questioning of various people, in this case, they said.

The raids come after the probe agency questioned Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her MP son Rahul at its headquarters here. While Sonia Gandhi was questioned for more than 11 hours, spread over three rounds, last month, Rahul Gandhi was probed by the ED for five days, at intervals, clocking over 50 hours in June.

Senior Congress politicians like Mallikarjun Kharge and Pawan Bansal were also questioned by the ED in April.

The National Herald is published by the Associated Journals Ltd. (AJL), and its holding company is Young Indian.

Officers of the federal agency searched the office of the National Herald located in the 'Herald House' building at Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg near ITO in central Delhi. The office is registered in the name of AJL.

According to officials, the location of a shell (dummy) company in Kolkata involved in the case, has also been covered in the raids.

The Congress party had called the ED action against its leaders "political vendetta", saying there was no money laundering in the case