There is more trouble for Trinamool Congress general secretary Abhishek Banerjee. A day after a sustained grilling by the Enforcement Directorate, the Calcutta High Court on Thursday directed the investigating agencies to obtain and submit before it all the details of Banerjee’s company Leaps and Bounds.
“The court has directed the ED to submit before it the details of Memorandum of Association, Articles of Association, list of its employees and the directors, their joining date and nature of their responsibilities everything,” Firdaus Shamim a lawyer said adding the Court has also directed the agency to submit all the information regarding the Chief Executive Officer of the company including the power and nature of his responsibilities.
The Court has directed the Agency to submit the report in a week’s time, the lawyers said.
The ED has already asked Banerjee to submit documents regarding his nature of association with the Company in question, sources said adding Banerjee has also been asked by the Agency to submit the details of his properties and those belonging to his relatives.
Besides, he has also been asked to share information regarding investments he might have made in the share market, ED officials said.
Banerjee who is also the nephew of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that he was unnecessarily being harassed because he had not sold his spine — like some other leaders of his party had done — to the BJP.
“I am being unnecessarily harassed by the ED at the instance of the BJP Government for I have refused to surrender before them like some other leaders (read Suvendu Adhikari who joined the BJP ahead of the 2021 Bengal Assembly elections) have done,” the junior Banerjee said.
“They are probing the school recruitment scam but I can emphatically say that not a single paisa of SSC scam has gone to my company … these people had asked me similar questions before too about cattle scam, coal scam … my question is how can money from all these scams go to a single company … can a child have three mothers … this is simply throwing stones in the darkness to find a chance to grab me … but they will fail,” the Diamond Harbour MP said.
Union Minister Dharmendra promptly reacted to Banerjee’s statements saying he should not act as the judge in his own case.
“He is not a Judge, he is giving himself a clean chit … Let the agencies investigate and let the Court decide … the law will not stop taking its course simply because Abhishek Banerjee wants it this way,” Pradhan said adding, “the whole system of administration and governance in Bengal is corrupt which is proved by the investigations going on in cattle and coal smuggling, rice smuggling, protection given to the drug mafia … this is apart from the Sharada chit fund scam, Narada scam and now the recruitment scam.”
The TMC immediately hit back wondering why nothing was being done to Suvendu Adhikari. “Our Leader of the Opposition was seen taking money from beneath the table in the Narada scam but nothing was done to him because he had entered the BJP’s washing machine,” Bengal minister Shashi Panja said.
TMC State vice president Jayprakash Majumdar too hit out at the BJP leadership for sparing Adhikari. Majumdar who was himself in the BJP before joining the TMC said how, “in front of me this man had held Amit Shah’s feet to save him from investigations and then joined the BJP … all this I saw in front of me as I was in the same party then.”