Special court in Delhi reserves order on bail of corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar in money laundering case

A special court here has reserved the order on the bail of corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar in a money laundering case related to illegally receiving foreign funding.The same court had recently taken the cognizance on the ED chargesheet in a case of alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) by an NGO linked Talwar, who is currently in judicial custody in the matter.

A special court here has reserved the order on the bail of corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar in a money laundering case related to illegally receiving foreign funding.

Enforcement Directorate (ED) Counsel Amit Mahajan and Advocate Nitesh Rana while opposing the bail plea submitted that Talwar is an accused of a serious economic offence and if granted the relief, he may flee. They argued that he was already absconding from justice prior to his arrest and had to be brought from Dubai through deportation.

Whereas Deepak Takwar's lawyers submitted that no purpose will be served by keeping him in custody in the matter and the probe is already over. "All the evidence in the case were documentary in nature and has been recovered by the probe agency'" lawyer submit while seeking bail for Talwar.

Special judge Ajay Kumar Kuhar reserved the order after the conclusion of the argument by both sides.

The same court had recently taken the cognizance on the ED chargesheet in a case of alleged violations of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) by an NGO linked Talwar, who is currently in judicial custody in the matter.

The ED case is based on an FIR registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in November 2017 in a complaint of FCRA violations involving more than Rs 90 crore against Deepak Talwar.

The allegations are that Advantage India, an NGO, whose Deepak Talwar is a founding member of, had received foreign contributions of Rs 90.75 crores from MBDA England (Leading European Missile Manufacturer) and Airbus France under CSR funding.

According to the ED, it has been revealed that Advantage India did not spend all the funds of FCRA on the mandated purposes and the funds were siphoned off for non-mandated purposes by booking bogus expenditure under various heads to show that foreign donations were utilized for mandated purposes.

A Delhi court had earlier dismissed Talwar's interim bail application on medical grounds in view of coronavirus noting that he was lodged in Tihar central jail here, where all the facilities were available.

( With inputs from ANI )