ED questions Aishwarya Rai: Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan reached the Enforcement Directorate (ED) office in Delhi regarding the investigation related to the Panama Papers case. The ED had summoned her for questioning in connection with the ongoing investigation in the case. Aishwarya Rai has been produced at Loknayak Bhawan in Delhi. Earlier it was reported that she had refused to appear before the ED today. However, later she reached the ED office for questioning. After five hours of questioning, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan was snapped exiting the Enforcement Directorate’s office on Monday evening.
Let us tell you that before this, Aishwarya had requested to postpone the inquiry twice. This request was made in front of the Special Investigation Team probing the Panama Papers leak. In the Panama Papers case, the ED has already questioned many big personalities, in this episode the ED has questioned cricketers, politicians, actors, players, businessmen. ED has already questioned Abhishek Bachchan in this case. During this, Abhishek had also presented some documents in front of the ED. ED has been investigating this matter for a long time.
The 40-year data of Mossack Fonseca, a law firm in Panama, a tax haven, was leaked on April 3, 2016. The data revealed that rich and influential people around the world are investing money in off-shore companies to save tax. These documents include the names of 500 Indians, including film stars and industrialists. In this way, tax evasion and money laundering was happening on a large scale.
It was claimed that Aishwarya Rai was a director and shareholder of a company outside the country. The name of the company was Amik Partners Private Limited. Its headquarter was in the Virgin Islands. This company was formed in 2005. Three years later, i.e. in 2008, the company was closed. Apart from Aishwarya, father K. Rai, mother Vrinda Rai and brother Aditya Rai were also her partners in the company. At the same time, according to a report, Amitabh Bachchan was made the director of 4 companies. Of these, three were in the Bahamas, while one was in the Virgin Islands. These were made in 1993.
The matter even reached the Supreme Court. Then the Central Government had formed a Multi Agency Group (MAG) in this matter. These included CBDT, RBI, ED and FIU. MAG was investigating all the names and giving the report to the SIT set up to investigate black money and the central government.
In 2016, 11.5 crore tax documents of a Panama law firm were leaked in the UK. In this the names of big leaders, businessmen and big personalities from all over the world were revealed. Talking about India in this case, the names of about 500 people of the country were revealed to be in this list. The name of the Bachchan family was also included in this.