Rattled by the exposé that the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) received Rs2 crore from four fictitious companies, the AAP on Tuesday tried to do the damage control by writing to the Chief Justice of India to order a Special Investigating Team (SIT) probe into the funding of the Congress, the BJP and the AAP and challenged the Government to order a probe into the party’s funding.
The thrust of the AAP’s contention was that it received the money by cheques and relied on the fact that the four companies were registered with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) and had valid PAN numbers. But the AAP could not provide a cogent explanation as to why it did not carry out proper verification about transfer of such huge amounts to its accounts on the same day from such unknown companies.
Realising that the allegation could take the wind out of their claims of being a party with a transparent funding mechanism, AAP leadership went into an overdrive in an attempt to come clean. The party held a detailed press conference to claim its innocence, and raised questions on the nature of donations received by other parties.
At the press conference, AAP member Meera Sanyal, a former CEO of the Royal Bank of Scotland in India, said, “It is not our duty to cross check whether the account holder is genuine or not because once the bank has given the go-ahead, it is understood that the account is legitimate.” AAP spokesperson Ashutosh added, “Our job is to check whether the company is registered or not, the authenticity of the PAN card and the genuineness of the bank account. We also make our transactions completely transparent and tell the person donating that their name will be mentioned.”
In a letter to the Supreme Court registry, the AAP requested the CJI to set up a SIT to look into not only AAP’s accounts but also those of the BJP and the Congress. The party sent letters also to Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and BJP leader Amit Shah asking them to let their parties undergo the SIT probe into their funds. In the letter to the CJI, the AAP said that it was prepared for derecognition if the probe revealed anything incriminating.
The party attacked Finance Minister Arun Jaitley for accusing it of being involved in Hawala transactions. While AAP leader Kumar Vishwas said that if the Finance Minister could not monitor how these fake companies came up, then he should resign, AAP convener Arvind Kejriwal dared the Minister to arrest him if his involvement in the scam is proved.
“Finance Minister says we took Hawala money. Hawala money in chequesIJ I dare him to arrest me if we took Hawala money. What prevents him,” tweeted Kejriwal. Sanyal targeted Jaitley as well saying that instead of addressing press conferences, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley can just call up the CEOs of banks to get answers to all his queries about the four cheques of Rs 50 lakh each transferred to the AAP account.
Sanyal added that the banking system in India is “well-regulated” with “stringent” KYC (Know Your Customer) norms. “Banking privacy laws prohibit people from knowing information about companies,” she said. Putting up a strong defence, the AAP leaders claimed that the party vetted all donations with “due diligence”.