The Bharatiya Janata Party received donations from a company that is being probed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for facilitating ‘terror funded activities’, revealed by the BJP’s financial declarations made to the Election Commission.
According to the party’s filing, BJP received funding from the RKW Developers Ltd, a company that is being investigated by the ED for having connections with the late Iqbal Memon alias Iqbal Mirchi, who is a close aide of underworld mafia Dawood Ibrahim and was accused in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts, reported The Wire.
The report by CobraPost in January 2019 disclosed that in 2014-15, RKW, which is associated with the beleaguered Dewan Housing Finance Limited, gave Rs 10 crore to the party.
The report comes at a time when BJP is facing backlash for bringing in the electoral bonds that paved the way for a ‘secretive channel’ to obtain political donations from the corporates, despite the Reserve Bank Of India warning against it. The BJP is the largest party to benefit from the electoral bonds.
While BJP from time to time has received donations from the various corporate houses, no company has donated as much as RKW has. It is worth noting that the first funding by the RKW was made in the year 2014-15 while the electoral bonds were introduced in The Finance Bill 2017.
Ranjeet Bindra, a former director of the company, has already been arrested by the ED for reportedly facilitating deals on behalf of the underworld.
According to media reports, ED sources have described Bindra as an “agent” who “brokered” the sale of Iqbal Mirchi’s properties while RKW developers acted as facilitator.
The Wire report alleges that Skill Realtors, a company which donated Rs 2 crore to the BJP in 2014-15, and Sunblink Real Estate, the other company which bought Iqbal Mirchi’s properties share the same directorship.
The Iqbal Mirchi case was one of the issues on which Maharashtra Assembly Elections were fought. The ED had questioned Nationalist Congress Party leader Praful Patel for alleged property transactions between his Mirchi, Millennium Developers and Sunblink.
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